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MINNESOTA 








1904- 



MINNESOTA BOARD OF MANAGERS 

FOR 

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

EXPOSITION 



CONDE HAMLIN, 
JOSEPH M. UNDERWOOD, 
THEODORE L. HAYS, 



President 

Vice President 

Secretary 



CHARLES S. MITCHELL. 
Superintendent 



MINNESOTA 



BRIEF SKETCHES 
OF ITS 



HISTORY, RESOURCES 

AND 

OPPORTUNITIES 




Prepared for distribution at the 
World's Fair, St. Louis, 1904 



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JAN 10 1905 
D.ofO, 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 

By Warren Upham, Secretary of the Minnesota Historical 

Society, 

If the hills and valleys of our state could answer 
to our questioning; if the sighing of its pine forests 
were a language; if its thousands of limpid lakes, 
flashing back the brightness of the sun, could reflect 
the scenes that have been mirrored in them; if its 
boundless prairies could repeat the story of their 
transformation from the roaming-ground of herds of 
bison into waving seas of grain; if the rich mines of 
iron ore at the north could tell of the persistent pros- 
pecting and the enterprise in railway building that un- 
locked their wealth; if we could hear such voices 
from the past, we should be thrilled with the romantic 
narrative of Minnesota, and our hearts would be 
deeply stirred with sympathy for the hardships and 
persevering courage of its people, and with admira- 
tion for their achievements. 

Previous to the settlement of this area by white 
immigration, which may be said to have begun in 
1849, when the Territory of Minnesota was organized, 
there were nearly two hundred years of gradually in- 
creasing knowledge of the geography of this state. 
During the first century, its explorers were French, 
chiefly led to this distant region for the profits of the 
fur trade. In the first half of the second century, 
after the British conquest of Canada, the explorers 
were English-speaking traders and travelers; and in 
its latter half, expeditions sent by the United States 
government to acquire information of the unsettled 
parts of the Northwest Territory and of the northern 
part of the Louisiana Purchase. 

The entire history to be here briefly sketched is 
thus divisible into three parts: i. The period of 
French exploration in Minnesota, from 1655 to 1763, 
the date of the cession of Canada to the English; 
2. The period of English colonial and United States 
exploration, from 1763 to 1849; 3. The period of 
Minnesota's territorial and state development, from 
1849 to 1904. The three periods together span two 
and a half centuries. 

About a third of this state, lying east of the Mis- 
sissippi and of a line drawn to the north from its head 
at Lake Itasca, belonged to the Northwest Territory, 
for which Congress enacted the Ordinance of 1787. 
The other two-thirds were acquired by the United 
States in the Louisiana Purchase, negotiated with the 
government of France under Napoleon, April 30, 1803. 

Early French Explorations^ 

The motto on our state seal, "L'Etoile du Nord," 
is a tribute to the memory of the French who first 
discovered and mapped Lake Superior, the upper 
part of the Mississippi, and the great region which 



to-day forms our state of Minnesota. It recalls the 
time when New France stretched from Acadie and 
Quebec west to the sources of the Mississippi, and 
thence northwest to the Saskatchewan and south 
to the Gulf of Mexico, comprising, with somewhat 
vague boundaries, nearly half of this continent. 

French pioneers of commerce and of Christian 
missions had made these regions known to the world 
and loyally claimed them as possessions of the crown 
of France, although their settlements and actual occu- 
pation of the country were limited, throughout the 
vast interior region, to widely separated trading posts 
and missions on the large lakes and rivers. The num- 
ber of the French in Minnesota, and indeed along all 
the course of the iSIississippi above New Orleans, and 
in all the region of the great lakes tributary to the 
St. Lawrence, was merely a handful in comparison 
with the thousands of the red aboriginal people. 

After the discovery of the lower ^lississippi by the 
ill-fated Spanish adventurer, De Soto, in 1541, a hun- 
dred and fourteen years passed before this river was 
next seen by Europeans. Then, in the year 1655 two 
hardy French explorers, Groseilliers and Radisson, 
appear, according to the narrative of the latter, to 
have crossed Wisconsin to the Mississippi, and to 
have voyaged up that river to the large island in Min- 
nesota, called Prairie Island in translation of its old 
French name, on the west side of the main channel 
of the Mississippi above Lake Pepin, between the 
present sites of the cities of Red Wing and Hastings. 
There a year was spent with the Indians, of whom a 
large company from many tribes went in the summer 
of 1656 with these two Frenchmen on their return to 
Montreal and Quebec, carrying in their canoes a rich 
freight of furs. 

During a second expedition three years later, in 
1659-60, the same earliest pioneers of exploration in 
]\Iinnesota, coming then by the way of Lake Superior, 
visited the wooded region of Mille Lacs, held a coun- 
cil with the representatives of many bands of the 
Sioux and Crees, and traveled with some of the Prai- 
rie Sioux to their villages and hunting grounds on 
the vast prairies of the Minnesota river. 

On July 2, .1679, twenty-four years after the first 
western expedition of Groseilliers and Radisson, an- 
other forerunner of the fur trade, Du Luth, visited the 
Isanti Sioux at their great village on Mille Lacs. In 
the autumn he held a council with the Sioux, Assini- 
boines, and other northern tribes, near the site of the 
present city of Duluth, for the purpose of inducing 
them to forsake their hereditary warfare, live in peace 
with each other, and collect furs for himself and other 
French traders. 

Almost exactly a year later, about the first of July, 
1680, Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan priest, and 
two other Frenchmen, who had been sent from the 
Illinois river up the Mississippi by the great explorer, 
La Salle, were the first white men to see the Falls of 



St. Anthony, which Hennepin so named for his pa- 
tron saint. This incident is the subject of the butter 
model which is shown in the state's dairy exhibit at 
the St. Louis Exposition. Their experiences on this 
expedition, being taken captive by a band of Sioux and 
rescued by Du Luth, form a most interesting narrative 
as told in varying versions by Hennepin, Du Luth, and 
La Salle. When the rescuing party and the former cap- 
tives started back, they voyaged down the Mississippi 
to the Wisconsin river, and thence up that stream 
and over portages to Green Bay. For this jour- 
ney the chief of the Isanti tribe traced the route on a 
paper and marked its portages, this being probably 
the earliest mapping of any part of Minnesota. 

Three years afterward, in 1683, Le Sueur came to 
Lake Pepin and the Mississippi by this canoe route of 
the Wisconsin river, for fur trading; and at some 
time within the next few years he made a canoe trip 
of exploration up the Mississippi to the neighborhood 
of Sandy lake. In the spring of 1695 he established 
a trading post on Prairie Island; but in the summer 
he returned to Quebec, and thence the next year he 
sailed to France. 

Le Sueur had discovered mineral wealth, as he 
erroneously thought, in a blue or green earth whicii 
the Sioux dug from the rock bluffs of the Blue Earth 
river a few miles from its junction with the Minne- 
sota river, near Mankato. The Sioux used this earth 
as a paint, but Le Sueur thought it to be an ore of 
copper. He submitted the supposed ore to one of the 
king's assayers, secured a royal commission to mine 
it, and, after surmounting various obstacles, came 
over from France with a party of thirty miners, land- 
ing at Biloxi, near the mouth of the Mississippi, in 
December, 1699. He voyaged up the Mississippi, and 
spent the winter of 1700-1701 on the Blue Earth river, 
where he arrived the first day of October. A fort 
was built, and for the sustenance of the large com- 
pany of miners, with French traders who came to 
them, and visiting savages, they hunted down and 
slaughtered four hundred bufifaloes at the beginning 
of winter, and kept the meat frozen. In April, 1701, 
with the opening of spring, the miners took out fully 
30,000 pounds of the supposed copper ore, of which, 
under Le Sueur's direction they selected four thou- 
sand pounds to be carried to the fort. This quantity 
was taken down the Mississippi and despatched to 
France, but no further record of it is known. 
Le Sueur at the same time sailed again to France, and 
died on his return voyage to Louisiana, or not long 
after his arrival. 

The next and the last of the great French explor- 
ers of Minnesota during this period was Verendrye, 
who, in the year 1731 and onward, with his sons and 
a nephew, traversed the streams and lakes of our 
northern boundary. Fort St. Pierre, a trading post, 
v/as built at the mouth of Rainy lake. Fort St. 
Charles on the west side of the Lake of the Woods,. 



and other forts or trading posts on Lake Winnipeg 
and the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan rivers. Veren- 
drj-e was the founder of the fur trade in the northern 
part of [Minnesota, in Manitoba, and the Saskatche- 
wan region, where it greatly flourished during the 
next hundred years; and two of his sons were the 
first white men to cross the great plains and reach the 
Rocky [Mountains, in the winter of 1742-43. 

The Indian Tribes. 

When the history of [Minnesota began, in its re- 
lation to the white or Caucasian race, the tribes of the 
red or American race here occupied somewhat dififer- 
ent areas from those which they had fifty years ago. 
Sioux and Crees then ranged through the northern 
wooded country between Lake Superior and the Red 
river, whence they were driven during the next cen- 
tury, the Sioux to the south and the Crees to the 
north, by the aggressive Ojibways or Chippewas, who 
had become first known to the French as the tribe of 
the Falls of St. Mary, at the mouth of Lake Superior. 

About a hundred years after the first coming of 
white men, the Ojibways wrested Mille Lacs and the 
Rum river from the Sioux. Thenceforward these two 
peoples occupied all the area of this state, the Ojib- 
ways holding its northeastern wooded half, and the 
Sioux (who called themselves Dakotas) its prairie 
half on the southwest, tmtil the land began to be 
taken for agriculture. 

Soon after the massacre of the white settlers in the 
southwest part of Minnesota, in August, 1862, nearly 
all of the Sioux were driven westward into Dakota. 
The Ojibways at present number about 8,500 on their 
several reservations in the northern part of this state, 
being probably about as many as when formerl;- they 
owned all that northern country. 

The Second Century of Explorations. 

La Salle, in 1682, having descended the Mississippi 
to its mouth, made there a ceremonious proclama- 
tion, giving all the basin of this great river to France. 
The vast territory so claimed he called Louisiana, 
in honor of the French king, Louis XIV. It com- 
prised nearly all of Minnesota, excepting only the 
areas at the north tributary eastward to Lake Su- 
perior and the St. Lawrence, and northwestward to 
the Red river and Lake Winnipeg, which were other- 
wise added to the nominal possessions of France by 
the explorations of Du Luth and Verendrye. But 
these immense domains were lost by France in 1763, 
when her long war with Great Britain and the Eng- 
lish colonies was terminated in a treaty at Paris. 
Canada and Louisiana west to the Mississippi were 
ceded to Great Britain, and the part of the Louisiana 
territory beyond the Mississippi was ceded to Spain. 
Thirty-seven years later, however, on October i. 1800, 
Spain retroceded that area to France and it was pur- 
chased by the United States on April 30, 1803. 

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After 1763, when France lost her American posses- 
sions, the extension and publication of geographic 
knowledge of Minnesota was carried forward chiefly 
by English-speaking explorers. The first of these 
was Captain Jonathan Carver, from the colony of 
Connecticut, who spent the winter of 1766-67 among 
the Sioux of the Minnesota river, near the site of 
the city of New Ulm. He had hoped to cross the 
continent to the Pacific ocean, but was prevented 
from advancing farther by lack of supplies. 

In his return east, Carver traveled with canoes 
along the north shore of Lake Superior, visiting 
Grand Portage, the most eastern and oldest town in 
Minnesota. Not long after Verendrye's explorations. 
Grand Portage became the landing place of fur trad- 
ers and voyageurs on their long canoe route through 
the Great Lakes, Pigeon river, Rainy lake, and the 
Lake of the Woods, to the rich fur country of Lake 
Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan. It was already a 
very important outfitting post for the fur trade in 
1767, when Carver was there. 

Among the pioneers and explorers for the exten- 
sion of the fur trade in northern Minnesota and also 
farther northwest during the next fifty years, four 
names stand forth most clearly to us, through their 
writings and records of surveys. These are Alex- 
ander Henry, the elder, as he may be termed in dis- 
tinction from his nephew of the same name; Sir 
Alexander ^Mackenzie, the discoverer and explorer, 
in 1789, of the great river that bears his name; David 
Thompson, the surveyor; and the younger Alexander 
Henry. Few of the traders left any records, even 
in correspondence or note books; but some of them, 
as William Morrison, who in 1804 visited Lac la 
Biche (now Lake Itasca), made journeys and dis- 
coveries which would appear of great significance in 
the history of our state if we had narrations of their 
lives and work. 

Until the United States in 1803 acquired the vast 
territory then called Louisiana, including the west half 
of the Mississippi basin, no government expedition 
was sent into the area of Minnesota. With that great 
expansion of our national domain, it became necessary 
to send explorers beyond the Mississippi, as Lewis 
and Clark, in 1804, to cross the upper Missouri region 
and the Rocky Mountains, and Pike, the next year, 
to the headwaters of the Mississippi. 

Lieut. Zcbulon M. Pike and his party of twenty 
soldiers started from St. Louis, on this expedition, 
August 9, 1805, in a keel boat seventy feet long, pro- 
visioned for four months. They ascended the ISIis- 
sissippi to the central part of Minnesota, where they 
were overtaken by early snow and cold, on October 
i6th, being therefore obliged to winter at Pike Rapids, 
in what is now Morrison county. The site of their 
stockaded encampment, or fort, has been identified 
there, on the west shore of the river, by Hon. Nathan 
Richardson, of Little Falls. The party relied largely 



on the abundant game of the region for their suste- 
nance. In the winter, setting out December loth, 

Pike ad- 
vanced a- 
foot, with a 
lew of his 
men, to 
Sandy, 
Leech, and 
Cass lakes, 
attained the 
objects of 
his expedi- 
tion c o n- 
cerning the 
£ relations of 
the fur trad- 
ers to the 
government 
of the Unit- 
ed Stat es, 
. tr> and returned 
;:j ^ to the fort 
2 ^ at Pike Rap- 
ids on the 
fifth of 
March. 




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j^ 5j M ississippi, 

rt 3 he reached 

o p. St. Louis on 

S -y the last day 

^ £ of April, 

g I i8o6. H i s 

< o. very inter- 

<< V esting jour- 

wi nal gives 

>, our earliest 

p, 

P, detailed de- 



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scription of 
the upper 
M ississippi 
region 
above the 
mouth of 
E 1 k river, 
with many 
names of 
lakes and 
streams, and 
a definite 
view of the 
con ditions 
then pre- 
V a i 1 ing at 
the fur trad- 
ing posts. 

On September 23, 1805. in the journey up the Mis- 
sissippi, Pike held a council with the Sioux on the 



island since named for him at the mouth of the Min- 
nesota river (then called St. Peter's river). In this 
council he acquired from the Sioux by a treaty, for 
military uses by the United States, a tract nine miles 
square, extending on both sides of the Mississippi 
from the Minnesota river to about a mile above the 
Falls of St. Anthony. In 1817 this tract was again 
examined by Major Stephen H. Long, and in 1819 to 
1823 a fort was established at the junction of the 
Minnesota with the Mississippi. It was called Fort 
St. Anthony by its first commandant, Lieut. Col. 
Henry Leavenworth; but was named Fort Snelling 
in 1824, by Gen. Winfield Scott, in honor of the sec- 
ond commandant. Col. Josiah Snelling. under whose 
direction the fort had been mostly built. 

May 10, 1823, the first steamboat, the Virginia, 
came up the Mississippi to the fort, beginning a traffic 
which gradually increased to its culmination in 1857, 
when 99 steamboats plied on this river, the aggregate 
number of their trips to St. Paul being 965. 

Scarcely was the fort completed, when in the sum- 
mer of 1823 the most important expedition ever sent 
to explore this region for the United States govern- 
ment was made under the command of Major Long, 
who six years before had ascended the Mississippi to 
the Falls of St. Anthony. This expedition traversed 
the valleys of the Minnesota and Red rivers, to Lake 
Winnipeg, and returned east by the way of Winnipeg 
river, the Lake of the Woods, and Rainy river and 
lake, to the Canadian Fort William on Lake Supe- 
rior. The geology of the route, and also the fauna and 
flora, were observed, with collection of specimens, by 
scientists, who accompanied Major Long; and a nar- 
rative of the expedition, in two volumes, published 
in 1825, was written by Prof. William H. Keating, 
the geologist, giving the first detailed information of 
the natural history of this state. 

Beltrami, an Italian political exile, accompanied 
Long's party to Pembina, at the northwest corner of 
Minnesota. Thinking himself treated discourteously, 
he thence returned to Fort Snelling. with guidance 
by friendly Indians, but with no white companion 
and in part entirely alone. In this toilsome journey 
he was the earliest explorer (excepting the Canadian 
surveyor, David Thompson, in 1798) of the region 
of Red lake and the Turtle lakes and river, this 
being the most northern tributary of the Mississippi. 

Three years before, in 1820. Gen. Lewis Cass had 
led an exploring expedition from Detroit, passing 
through lakes Huron and Superior, to Sandy lake, 
and thence up the Mississippi to the Upper Red Cedar 
lake, which was named by Henry R. Schoolcraft, the 
narrator of the expedition, Cass lake. 

The highest source and head of the Mississippi, 
however, remained to be explored in 1832 by School- 
craft, who gave to the beautiful lake there a curiously 

10 



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5 5 country 



coined name, Itasca, formed of two Latin worda, 
Veritas, truth, and Caput, head, by omission of the 

first and last syllables. 

A few years later, in 
1836, Lake Itasca was 
visited by Joseph Nico- 
las Nicollet, as a geog- 
rapher for the United 
States, who also in 1838 
traversed the southwest 
part of Minnesota to 
Lake Shetek and the In- 
dian pipestone quarry. 
From his surveys and 
the information gathered 
by him from previous 
explorers and maps, 
Nicollet compiled a 
most admirably elabo- 
rate and accurate map 
of this northwestern 
including all 
5 the area of our state, 
cii when it had yet no white 
53 inhabitants, excepting at 
2 2 Fort Snelling, Grand 
„ „- Portage, and the few 
° " and scattered fur trading 

t" >> Other explorers and 
5^ travelers during this pe- 
riod, who deserve men- 
tion, were G. W. Feath- 
crstonhaugh, an English 
geologist, who crossed 
southwestern Minnesota 
to the Coteau des Prai- 
ries in 1835; Lieut. Al- 
bert Lea, who was in 
southern Minnesota in 
1836; George Catlin, the 
celebrated painter of In- 
dian portraits, who vis- 
ited the pipestone quar- 
ry in 1837: and the Uni- 
^ ted States geologists, 
David Dale Owen, J. G. 
Norwood, and B. F. 
Shumard, who examined 
various parts of Minne- 
sota in the years 1847-50. their report being published 
in 1852. 



II 



Development as a Territory and State. 

With the admission of Wisconsin to statehood, in 
May, 1848, the part of her former territory west of 
the St. Croix river was left without a government, as 
was also the large area west of the Mississippi which 
had been formerly included in Iowa territory. There- 
fore a convention of the people of these areas, held in 
Stillwater on Aug. 26, 1848, petitioned Congress for the 
organization of a new territory, to be named Minnesota. 

This name, the Sioux designation of the largest 
river lying almost wholly inside our present state 
boundaries, means '"whitish water," or, as may be 
said poetically, "sky-tinted water," in allusion to the 
whitishly turbid color of the river during flood stages. 
It was proposed by Gen. Henry H. Sibley, who on 
October 30th of the same year was elected as the 
delegate to Congress from the prospective territory. 

On March 3, 1849, an act of Congress provided for 
the territorial government of Minnesota, which was 
organized and proclaimed June i, 1849, by Gov. Alex- 
ander Ramsey. He had been ippointed to this office 
by President Zachary Taylor, and was the territorial 
governor during four years. Gov. Willis A. Gorman 
succeeded him for another four years, and Gov. Sam- 
uel Medary for the next year, which was the last of 
the territory, Minnesota being admitted to the Union 
on May 11, 1858, as the thirty-second state. 

The capital from the beginning was the village of 
St. Paul, which was first settled in 1838 to 1841, and 
was incorporated as a city on March 4, 1854. 

St. Anthony was founded in 1840 to 1847, and be- 
came a city in 1855; Minneapolis, on the west side of 
the Mississippi, received its first settlers in 1849 to 
1855, was incorporated as a town in 1856, and as a city 
in 1867; and these two cities were united under one 
city government in 1872, with the latter name. 

lo 1851 the legislature permanently located the 
three principal institutions of the territory and state, 
the capital to be in St. Paul, the university in St. An- 
thony .(now the east part of Minneapolis), and the 
prison in Stillwater. The last named town was set- 
tled in 1841 to 1843, and was incorporated under a city 
charter on the same date as St. Paul, March 4, 1854. 

Winona was founded in 1852, and received its city 
charter on ]\Iarch 6, 1857. 

Duluth, which was platted and named in 1856 for 
the early fur trader and explorer of Lake Superior and 
northern Minnesota, remained long under a village 
government, being incorporated as a city in 1870. 

Minnesota Territory had a population of 6,077 in 
1850. Ten years later the state had 172,023 people; 
in 1870, 439,706; in 1880, 780.773; in i8go. 1,301.826; 
and in 1900, 1,751,394, At the present date, 1904, it 
has very nearly two million people. In the census 
of igoo, the population of its five largest cities, whose 
founding has been noticed, was as follows: Minne- 
apolis, 202,718; St. Paul, 163,065; Duluth, 52,969; 
Winona, 19,714; and Stillwater, 12,318. 



12 



MINNESOTA: ITS GEOGRAPHY 
AND GEOLOGY. 

By C. W. Hall, Professor of Geography and Geolog}-, 
Stale University. 

As a unit of the North American continent, Min- 
nesota is very central. As a commonwealth it is the 
northernmost of the United States, since it reaches 
22.85 miles north of the 49th parallel, the great boun- 
dary meridian of the continent. Although not high 
above the sea, it still occupies an important place as 
we take into consideration the drainage of the conti- 
nent. Three of the great river systems of North 
America have their sources within its borders. Flow- 
ing northward are the Red River of the North and 
the southerly branches of the Rainy river; flowing 
eastward is the St. Louis, the westernmost source 
of the St. Lawrence; southward pours the Mis- 
sissippi. The area of the state is 84,286.53 square 
miles, or 53,943,379 acres. Of this area 5,637.53 square 
miles are water surface. This leaves room enough 
for more than 625,000 farms of 80 acres each. 

The relief of Minnesota is low. The highest sum- 
mit stands only 2,230 feet above the sea, and the lowest 
levels 602 feet along the shore of Lake Superior. The 
average altitude is 1,200 feet. Indeed, 41,897 square 
miles stand above the 1,200-foot plane, and 42,390 
square miles lie below this plane. From this it is 
seen that there can be but very little land so precipi- 
tous as to be unavailable for agriculture, and where 
the land is sterile that condition must be due to other 
factors than the presence of naked mountain slopes. 
Relief also shows that Minnesota is not peculiarly 
subject to floods. The long, low slopes will not 
gather water quickly into great volumes and roll it 
ofif readily, but on the other hand the thousands of 
lakes and far-stretching swamps will gather and furnish 
in slow delivery the volumes of water which fall in 
sudden rains or are formed by the rapid melting of the 
winter's accumulation of snow. 

Climate. 

Minnesota climate is bright and sunny. The aver- 
age of sunshiny days is more than 150 per year. 
Tower, in the midst of the iron mines, and in the 
highlands of the northeast, has 213 pleasant days 
yearly. Duluth can show more rainy days than any 
other city of the state. The rainfall for many years 
has averaged a little less than 30 inches for the entire 
state. There is a decrease in the quantity of rain as 
one traverses Minnesota from the east side to the 
west border and from the southeastern corner north- 
westerly to its contact with North Dakota and Mani- 
toba. At Caledonia, in the southeastern corner, an 
average rainfall of over 33 inches gives assurance of 
constant crops of corn and grass, while a rainfall of 
near 20 inches at St. Vincent, diagonally opposite, 
yields sufficient moisture to mature the wheat, which 
is the principal crop of the northwestern region. 

13 



Snowfall is not heavy; but the quantity of snow 
varies considerably from year to year. For the south- 
eastern part perhaps an average of 49 inches is a fair 
one; at all events, it is the record at Minneapolis 
since 1876. These figures show a precipitation a little 
less than Wisconsin and Michigan and considerably 
more than the Dakotas and Montana. 

In matters of temperature, too. the record of Min- 
nesota is most favorable. The average annual tem- 
perature is about 42 degrees, but were we to subdivide 




the state by drawing two lines across it through Lake 
Mille Lacs, one north and south and the other east and 
west, we would find a temperature of nearly 44 degrees 
pervading the southeastern quarter and somewhat 
colder weather settling down upon the northwestern. 
That this is not a statement based upon recent reports 
is assured when it is said that the record runs back 
for more than 75 years, and shows that there has been 
a change of less than one degree as we compare the 
average temperature of the 25 years from 1823 to 1849 
with the years from 1878 to the present time. 

Minnesota lies between the two well-beaten tracks, 
the northern and the central, of the continental cy- 



14 



clones, which in ceaseless procession cross the con- 
tinent from west to east. The winds are in conse- 
quence prevailingly westward. Owing to the com- 
paratively low relief of its land surface, there are few 
local eddies or storms developed; but the procession 
moves steadily forward in its eastward course. The 
average force of the wind cannot be readily measured, 
but its average is not high. It is rare, indeed, that a 
velocity of 40 miles per hour is attained. The state 
lies so far to the north of the tornado tract of the 
Mississippi valley that these storms are comparatively 
rare. Only a few destructive ones are reported, and 
none of them north of the state's center, the latitude 
of Lake INIille Lacs. This is a climatic fact deserving 
wide mention. 

Prairie and Forest. 

As to its plant population, the state exhibits two 
areas, that of the prairie and that of the forest. The 
former comprises 32,000 square miles and the latter 
52,000. The former lies in the southern and western 




I^OGGiNG TRAIN. 

portions and the latter in the central, northern and 
eastern portions. Upon the prairies have been de- 
veloped cities, villages and farms at a much more 
rapid rate than in the forests, for the simple reason 
that upon them grain fields can be cultivated without 
the hard drudgery of felling primeval forests before 
the plow enters the ground. Rich prairie soil affords 
wonderfully fertile farms. Prairies are divisible into 
several types, according to their surface features and 
mode of origin. In the southern and southwestern 
districts, and locally elsewhere throughout the state, 
there are great rolling prairies, owing their character- 
istic feature to the morainic arrangement of the gla- 
cial drift over which they lie. Another type of prairies, 
seen in long and almost level stretches of the best 
farming lands, is to be found in the ancient lake bot- 
toms scattered throughout the state. The soil is deep 
and rich and lasting. Farms upon these lake-bottom 
prairies show no exhaustion after a quarter of a cen- 
tury of constant cropping. Such prairies owe their 
origin to the extension of great sheets of water during 

15 



the retreat of glacial ice in the closing years of the 
ice age. While there are many of these tracts, two are 
especially worthy of mention. One is the bed of 
glacial Lake Undine, lying in Blue Earth, Brown and 
parts of neighboring counties, stretching from the 
Iowa line northward to the Minnesota river through 
the central southern portion of the state. The other 
is the great valley of the Red River of the North, the 
bed of glacial Lake Agassiz, described by Upham in 
ISIonograph XXV., U. S. Geol. Survey. A third 
type of prairies consists of the openings, as they are 
called, or level tracts devoid of trees, occurring fre- 
quently in the forested areas of the central and north- 
ern districts. These openings are the least important 
of the three different types. Prairies are becoming 
the centers of a somewhat dense agricultural popula- 
tion. A density of 30 to 40 to the square mile is 
already attained in some counties distinctively agri- 
cultural. There are also located upon them enter- 
prising manufacturing centers and distributing points 
to meet the further demands of modern living. The 
prairies have proved remarkably incentive to progress 
throughout the state. A population map discloses the 
interesting fact that migration marks the lines of 
fertile prairies. Railroads follow them and a network 
of railroad tracks has been laid to gather up and take 
to the great consuming centers of the world the bread- 
stuffs which the broad Minnesota prairie farms produce. 
The forests of Minnesota proved to be the early 
incentive to settlement. While pre-territorial ex- 
plorers pronounced the state worthless for anything 
save its lumber and as pasture grounds for the buf- 
falo, lumbermen from the East, knowing well the vast 
wealth which lay in the streams tributary to the upper 
Mississippi, had in 1838 secured possession of the for- 
ests by treaties with the Indians. The lumber taken 
from the woods and floated down the streams was 
sawed and taken in rafts to southern cities. Later 
railroad trains have carried millions of feet to mar- 
kets. From small beginnings an industry has grown 
until within the state are the two greatest lumber 
manufacturing centers of the continent, Minneapolis 
and Duluth. The business has proved a profitable 
one. It has been prosecuted with such superb energy 
that the pine timber of the forests has become in large 
measure removed. It is said that only seventy-five 
thousand million feet now remain standing. The pine 
forests of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota con- 
tain the story of remarkable progress. Without the 
lumber which they have furnished, farmers could not 
have built the tens of thousands of comfortable and 
even luxurious farmer-homes within the prairie re- 
gions of Minnesota and her neighboring states. What- 
ever of rapid progress and successful control lies 
within the northern belt of states from the Great 
Lakes towards the Rocky Mountains, this is owed in 
no small degree to the forests. They have done noble 

j6 




MINNEHAHA FAt,I,& 



service in the development of the West; -what re- 
mains should be zealouslj- guarded. 

As the forests are removed and farms take their 
place, prairie tracts will be developed because of level 
surface and uniform soil. Now as the annual prairie 
fires are checked and the farmer plants his windbreak 
or becomes negligent of his fence areas, trees will 
grow upon the prairies. The timber culture act has 
done much towards foresting hundreds of acres of 
prairie land in southern Minnesota. It is an inter- 
esting question whether forests are being reduced in 
area or are advancing through the growth of protected 
trees over districts where, fifty and a hundred years 
ago, forest fires swept every tree from western and 
central Minnesota. Judicious treatment of forests will 
maintain a timber and fuel supply in the state for 
many future decades. 

The Soil. 

The soil is the most important factor of civiliza- 
tion. Its quality determines more than does any other 
factor the physical activities, the industries and the 
moral and intellectual tone of a commonwealth. A 
knowledge of its character and capabilities enables a 
people to direct their energies into lines of highest 
success by removing vain effort to grow what is un- 
natural and strange. Within the soil lie the mineral 
foods of all plants, mingled with that decaying vege- 
table matter which returns to living organisms worn- 
out substances from earlier plant generations. 

The mantle of rock waste in many states springs 
from underlying rocks; in iNIinnesota such is not the 
case. A mantle of glacial drift wholly covers the 
older formations, save in the southeastern corner of 
the state, where that unique tract of surface called the 
driftless area extends over the jMississippi from Wis- 
consin and Illinois into Minnesota and Iowa. This 
covering of drift, derived from many regions and 
made by the intermingling of many rock species, af- 
fords remarkable diversity in chemical components. 
In this respect Minnesota presents in the diverse 
quality of soil a diversity of crop possibilities rarely 
equaled and nowhere excelled within the United 
States. There are districts where sandstones and 
quartzites have left too large a proportion of their sub- 
stance in the general glacial degradation of the rocks 
of the state; but such tracts are few and small. Lime- 
stones, shales and eruptive rocks have given a richer 
substance and a more enduring basis for permanent 
and fertile soil-building. Taking the entire area of 
the state into consideration, exclusive of its lakes, 
fully 90 per cent is arable land, a proportion rarely 
reached in all the states of the Union. 

Streams and Lakes. 

Minnesota is drained by three river systems. One 
reaches the sea in Hudson Bay, another in the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, and a third in the Gulf of Mexico. 

18 



In area the last is larger than both the others and 
comprises over 47,000 square miles. The system flow- 
ing northward, whose waters are carried to Hudson 
Bay by the Red River of the North and the Rainy 
river drains scarcely 30,000 square miles, while less 
than 7,000 square miles is the area drained through 
Lake Superior into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

St. Lawrence Drainage Basin. — The St. Law- 
rence basin rests upon a datum plane 602 feet above 
the sea, and carries the water from the very highest 
portions of the state. The summits of the Misquah 
Hills are washed down through its many streamlets. 
The highest lakes of the state lie within this area. 
The entire region is thoroughly wooded, save where 
farmers have cut away the trees for making fields. 
The hills are rocky, sometimes precipitous, and every- 
where old crystalline rocks are very near the surface. 

The peculiar configuration of the ground in the 
northeastern portion of the state, where lie the head 
waters of the St. Lawrence, affords exceptionally 
favorable situations for lakes and unusual opportuni- 
ties for the location of water power. The rock 
troughs afford long, narrow, lake-like expansions of 




RED RIVER CART AND HAt,F-BKEEDS. 

the streams which, with but little expense in the con- 
struction of dams, can be made enormous reservoirs 
for water power. An illustration of possibilities in this 
direction is seen in the river St. Louis, which 
within a distance of five or six miles falls not less 
than 600 feet. With a drainage area of 5,000 square 
miles and numerous swamps and lakes scattered 
throughout its extent, the catchment basin of this 
stream affords a large and remarkably uniform rate of 
flow. This is already being utilized at Cloquet and 
Duluth, but thousands more men will find employment 
when the full capacity of the stream is harnessed. 
Eastward of Duluth, along the north shore, are the 
Temperance, Baptism, Poplar, Brule and Pigeon riv- 
ers, all certain to become of great importance. These 
streams are remarkable for their fish. Brook trout 
along the Lake Superior streams are remarkable both 
for size and numbers. The north shore of Lake Su- 
perior is fisherman's paradise. 

The Rainy River Basin — The Rainy river drains 
a region strikingly similar in many respects to that 
drained by the St. Lawrence. The descent of the 

19 



stream is not so precipitous. Rising in the same high 
lands as the St. Lawrence, that is, within tracts 
over 2,000 feet above the sea, it flows two or three 
times as far and leaves the state at 1,060 feet above the 
sea. The rocks over which it flows are extremely hard 
and it is only where some break in their continuity 
occurs that precipices are worn and waterfalls occur. 
But these develop, along the course of the stream, 
water power amounting to tens of thousands of horse 
power, so distributed that it is unusually steady and 
reliable. The lakes along the international boundary 
a^ord reservoir surface amounting to hundreds of 
square miles; narrow gorges at their outlets afiford 
exceptional opportunity for building dams and im- 
pounding surplus waters. Rainy Lake, with its vast 
water power at International Falls, is a typical illus- 
tration of the commercial possibilities of this basin. 
The Red River of the North — This stream drains 
a different region. Its sources are among the forests; 
it carries the waters of many lakes through a beautiful 
succession of water surfaces and glens past Fergus 
Falls into the prairie level of the ancient floor of Lake 
Agassiz. Through this it meanders in a slow and slug- 
gish stream nearly a thousand miles long between Min- 
nesota and North Dakota, and finally leaves the state 
at 748 feet above the sea. This stream carries oflf the 
surplus waters of the great wheat garden of the world. 

The Mississippi Drainage Basin — This basin is a 
complex one. Its character is incident to the history 
of the river itself. As a stream, the Mississippi is 
divisible into three parts or subdivisions — a lower 
Mississippi, from Cairo to the Gulf; a middle Mis- 
sissippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to the con- 
fluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota at Fort 
Snelling, a stretch of river whose banks are lofty 
rock walls carved out of ancient prairies; and an 
tipper Mississippi, from Fort Snelling to Lake Itasca. 
These subdivisions are geographically sharply distinct. 
The last one, the upper Mississippi, is by far the 
j'oungest, and it represents the working of the river 
during the few thousand years from the close of the 
glacial period to the present.. The river rises in a 
small yet beautiful lake and flows in an open channel 
almost upon the top of the glacial beds which form 
the superficial rock of Minnesota. It is so young, in 
other words, that it has not yet carved out a channel 
for itself, even in these soft and crumbling gravels of 
glacial time. The upper portion of the Mississippi 
from P'ort Snelling to Lake Itasca forms a well de- 
fined drainage area of 20,225 square miles. It is 
largely wooded, yet here and there occur small open- 
ing-like prairies. The stream winds sinuously for 
hundreds of miles. It descends 774 feet, but little 
more than one foot to the mile throughout its length 
to Fort Snelling. Some of the largest lakes in the 
state lie within this basin. Lake Alille Lacs, for in- 
stance, has 201 square miles; Leech lake nearly 200, 

20 



and Cass lake over lOO square miles. The power 
along this stream is enormous; 30,000 horse power at 
Minneapolis, many thousands more at St. Cloud, 
Sauk Rapids, Little Falls and Pokegama Falls are 
only a part of the possibilities this stream affords. 
Much of it is navigable, thus affording a means of 
inland transportation of great value in the commer- 
cial development of the state. The principal use of 
the river as a transportation line has been the floating 
of logs. Billions of feet of pine have been rolled into 
its channel and carried by its current to mills, where 
every kind of lumber product has been manufactured. 
Its service for logging is not yet ended; much timber 
along its course has yet to be marketed for the ma- 
terial advancement of the great Northwest. 

The Saint Croix, forming a part of her boundary 
line, drains over 3.000 square miles of Eastern Min- 
nesota. This river has played an important part in 
the material development of the state. Its extensive 
pine forests were early entered, and they have yielded 
millions of feet for the lumber manufacturer. 

The iVlinnesota River drains some 15,000 square 
miles of prairie land in Southern Minnesota. The 
Minnesota basin is as free from timber and is as typi- 
cally a prairie region as the upper Mississippi basin 
is forested and free from prairie tracts. In this re- 
spect the two areas so nearly equal in size, in height 
above the sea, and in their broader physical features, 
are markedly different, and impress their differences 
upon the economic problems arising from their set- 
tlement and development. The ease with which farms 
can be broken and brought under cultivation explains 
why the Minnesota River valley is occupied by a much 
larger population than the upper Mississippi. This, 
like the upper Mississippi, is fortunately not a region 
of terrific floods. Records of destruction from flooded 
streams, either in the upper Mississippi or in the 
Minnesota drainage area, are remarkably rare. 

The remaining portions of the state, draining south- 
ward and eastward, present the same general features 
as those just described. Among them the Vermillion 
at Hastings, the Cannon near Red Wing, the Zumbro 
and White Water, the Rolling Stone, the Root, and 
the Winnebago are the most important. The country 
is essentially one of prairie and not of forest, although 
along the Mississippi river the bottom lands are rich 
and the tree growth luxurious. Still this is a com- 
paratively small area, which has never developed a 
characteristically forested region. 

The Minnesota Reservoirs. 

The United States government has constructed, 
and is now maintaining, a system of reservoirs for 
impounding the waters about the sources of the Mis- 
sissippi. These reservoirs constitute a unique and 
important feature of the economics of this stream. 
Their purpose is to maintain a more equable water 
volume. As they hold back the surplus of heavy 



21 



rains and melting snows, they minimize the danger of 
overflow and destruction. Navigation during the dry 
season is aided by a partial opening of the gates, and 
manufacturing interests can depend upon a more con- 
stant power than the natural flow would afford. The 
many centers of manufacturing activity developed and 
to be developed between Fort Snelling and Lake Itasca 
and the ever growing transportation interests receive 
great benefit from this wise policy of reservoiring the 
Mississippi river. The reservoirs already built and 
being maintained are as follows: 

I. — Winnibigoshish reservoir, containing from 50 to 
75 square miles of water surface. 

2. — Leech Lake reservoir, 165 miles of surface. 

3. — Pine River reservoir, raising the water in Cross, 
Pine, Dagget, Rush, Whitefish, Trout and Hay lakes. 
The area is large. 

4. — Pokegama Lake reservoir, area about 10 square 
miles. 

5. — Sandy River reservoir, area of Sandy lake and 
tributary waters, nine miles. 

The Lakes of Minnesota. 

The lakes of Minnesota constitute one of the most 
interesting features of scenic beauty. Their use in 
cultivating love of the beautiful constitutes one of the 
highest elements in true education. There are many 
places from which one may see scores of lakes lying 
in dififerent directions. Thousands of farmers' homes 
are located upon the shores of deep, clear lakes. They 
afford comfort to man and beast. But they are not 
evenly distributed. ' Certain portions of the state have 
comparatively few. The Red River valley shows a 
remarkably sparse distribution, because the valley it- 
self is the bottom of a great lake, now disappeared 
from the earth. In southern Minnesota lakes are 
fewer than in northern, partly because southern Min- 
nesota is geographically older than northern Minne- 
sota. The surface features date back to the close of 
the ice age. In the west central portion of the state 
lies the famed Lake Park region of North America, 
where are thousands of lakes, varying from a half mile 
to many miles in length. All are glacial lakes and 
they owe their origin to physical movements develop- 
ing glacial moraines. 

Other lakes are in rock basins. Here are held the 
gathered waters until a point of overflow is reached 
upon the rim. An interesting feature of this type of 
rock-basin lake is the remarkable number of islands 
it may contain. Lake of the Woods, upon the border, 
carries thousands of islands. Some, to be sure, are 
mere rock masses standing up from the water. Rainy 
lake is said to contain 500 islands. Lake Saganaga, 
Basswood lake and others contain literally scores of 
these islands. 

Step by step with the formation of lakes begins and 
goes forward the process of their deformation. Silt 
washes in, at times in enormous quantity; and many 

22 



forms of aquatic plants mature with remarkable vigor. 
In the shallower lakes this last obliterating process 
works with great rapidity. Already hundreds of lakes 
have disappeared and rich, productive hay meadows 
taken their place. On every hand are transition 
marshes and fruitful hay meadows. In many places 
farmers are accelerating these processes by draining. 

Some Geological Features of the State. 

Passing now to that portion of Minnesota below 
ground, we find rocks everywhere in wonderful variety 
of physical characters. Some are so hard that the 
best steel tools make slow progress in cutting them. 
Others are so soft that they are crumbled by the 
fingers. They represent almost every phase of origin 
and change which the rocks of any region present. 
Some are the result of volcanic activity on a scale 
more magnificent than that now in evidence in the 
Hawaiian Islands or the West Indies. More than 
6,000 square miles are underlaid with volcanic rocks 
and thousands of square miles more carry other rocks 
w^hich tell of stupendous earth activity long geologic 
ages ago. These rocks, so far as they lie within the 
reach of the quarryman and the miner, stretch from 
the Minnesota River valley through Todd, Stearns 
and Morrison counties to Duluth, Hunter's Island 
ond Lake of the Woods. 

Thus we have in Todd, Morrison, Stearns, Sher- 
burne and Benton counties and along the Minnesota 
river from New Ulm to Ortonville extensive masses 
of the best granite to be found in the United States, 
if a resistance against a pressure of 25.000 to 30,000 
pounds per square inch signifies anything as to endur- 
ing qualities. Freshness and high quality exist at the 
very surface. Quarries have been opened at Orton- 
ville, Granite Falls, Redwood Falls, Morton, St. 
Cloud, St. Joseph, Luxemburgh, Haven, East St. 
Cloud, Sauk Rapids, Sauk Center, Watab and others. 
There are hundreds of places more where not only 
excellent quality but admirable textural and color 
qualities can be secured; and passing to the northern 
portion of the state, where now are isolated rock 
masses, we find a region where hundreds more of 
quarry stations exist, from which an illimitable supply 
of building stones of almost every phase of granitic 
quality can be secured. 

But towards the south and east are rocks made up 
of fragments of earlier ones. These, called fragmental 
or deposited rocks, are thousands of feet in thickness 
in the eastern and southern counties of the state. 
From Stillwater to Jefiferson, from Mankato to Wi- 
non^, from Minneapolis to Garden City, dolomites, 
limestones, shales and sandstones lie in endless quan- 
tity. Already the building stones from many quar- 
ries have become famous. Frontenac furnishes dolo- 
mite for stately buildings in lower New York, and 
Kasota for Philadelphia. In the local markets the 
blufifs of the Minnesota from iNIankato to Shakopee 



23 



aflford millions of yards each j-ear. and the St. Croix 
valley walls at Taylor's Falls and Stillwater present 
inexhaustible supplies. The cities growing beside the 
Mississippi river never want for building material; 
the Twin Cities consume Trenton limestone; Red 
Wing is cutting down Barnbluff, and Winona has the 
crest of Sugarloaf almost removed. 

Pipestone, Jasper and Luverne have paved many 
miles of Chicago streets. The quarries of sandstone 
of the Kettle river are in recent years affording i 
wonderful supply of one of the best sandstones the 
quarries of the United States alTord. It competes suc- 



COI,ITMNAR VOIvCANIC ROCKS. 
North Shore ot l,ake Supeiior. 




cessfully with the famous Euclid stone, Waverly stone, 
and Berea stone of Northern Ohio. 

Coming now to a later geologic age. we find here 
and there peculiar clays. For many years Mankato 
afforded a most excellent fire-clay for furnace linings 
and a large range of foundry uses. Goodhue county 
affords material for pottery of excellent quality: from 
its mining and molding has grown one of the largest 
manufactures of earthenware now operated in the 

24 



United States. The quality is excellent, the supply is 
enormous, and the industry is one of the most pros- 
perous in the commonwealth. 

The clay deposits within the state have proved of 
prime importance and of great value. Many centers 
of brick manufacture are already established, and more 
are undergoing rapid and healthful development. At 
Chaska and Shakopee years ago brick manufacturing 
was entered upon and has been continuously prose- 
cuted. Thirty million brick are annually made, which 
find a ready market in all the business centers of the 
West. At Minneapolis the clays formed among the 
deposits in the flood plain of the Mississippi furnish 
35 to 40 millions each year, with a steadily increasing 
output and correspondingly steady demand. At Wren- 
shall, a suburb of Duluth, 20 millions or more are 
yearly made out of the clay deposits in the bed of old 
Lake Duluth, a predecessor of Lake Superior. These 
clays were laid down upon the bottom of a quiet lake 
at the same time that its shores were rounding the 
pebbles and forming the sands which now make that 
boulevard, 475 feet above the lake, at once the beauty 
and pride of Duluth. At Moorhead, in the Red River 
valley, millions are made from the deposits of Lake 
Agassiz, one of the most remarkable features of glacial 
time, and whose history is peculiarly Minnesotan, since 
within this state its features were first studied, its shore 
lines first established and its history written by War- 
ren Upham, a citizen of the state. 

The clay beds just named are only examples of 
what occur in almost every portion of the state. 
There is not a county nor scarcely a township in which 
a large supply does not lie among the glacial deposits 
or the accumulations of decay as older rocks have 
yielded to the influences of time. Clay possesses a spe- 
cial interest in the present decade, since now we see 
the end of the great lumber industry, which has been 
so important for more than 50 years. Our pine trees are 
counted, the hardwood forests bought up and the plans 
for their marketing already perfected. As these build- 
ing materials disappear men must go to the ground 
and seek that out of which to rear the walls of business 
structures and less assuming homes. Clay beds are 
appealed to. They yield a cheap and excellent supply. 
In Minnesota, where they are so extensive and access- 
ible, they will be a growingly important factor. 

But it is not from clays alone that substitutes for 
pine forests are to be found. St. Paul has set a 
commendable example in the utilization of what had 
been considered a worthless calcareous shale. Here 
an industry has grown up which produces millions 
yearly of excellent brick, architecturally the most at- 
tractive artificial building material made in the state. 
At Mankato and Austin are manufactories where ex- 
tensive supplies of cement are made. Its quality is 
superior. The best commendation of the product is 
the steadily increasing output reported. 

25 



AGRICULTURE. 

By W. M. Hays, Professor of Agriculture, University of Minnesota. 

The country life of I^Iinnesota is peace loving, 
sturdy, industrious, thrifty and withal ready to make 
the most of the charms of this prettiest state, with its 
numerous lakes, its great rivers, its shores of the 
greatest inland sea, and its broad prairies, first em- 
erald with green and then golden with grain. These 
crj'Stal waters, as gems in their fair setting among 
the forest trees, or fringed with forests in the prairie 
land, making of ^Minnesota the Switzerland of Amer- 
ica, are helping to mould the spirit of the country 
people. The love of home is made dearer by the 
trees and by the waters. As the great pioneer move- 
ment to the westward ceases, the family life clings 
more closely to the farm homes. There is a great, 
hopeful, resistless impulse on to gain for country life 
all that modern advancement makes possible. The 
free rural mail delivery, large rural schools, with vans 
in which to reach them over good roads, and state 
schools of agriculture and home economics, tinder 
the agricultural college, have all come in rapid suc- 
cession. The enjoyment of a beautiful home life is 
giving the incentive for pretty farm houses and barns 
to match, all sheltered by beautiful groves. 

Three Great Agricultural Regions. 

Minnesota is divided agriculturally into three great 
regions. The southern two-fifths was a great undu- 
lating prairie region, with a nearly uniform, rich, 
black, clay loam soil, and is now a region of homes 
snugly sheltered by planted trees. The northeastern 
two-fifths was timbered with alternating groves of 
pine and deciduous trees, and has soils of red, yellow 
black and boulder clays, with areas of sandy and peaty 
lands interspersed. The necessity of removing trees 
has retarded the settlement of this region, leaving 
until now lands at low prices for people who were 
not ready to secure prairie farms until after they 
were all sold. The northwestern one-fifth, formed by 
the debris deposited in a glacial lake, now c?.lled "An- 
cient Lake Agassiz," is widely known by the name of 
Red River Valley. Its surface is as level as a floor, 
and the thrifty farmers will soon have it all drained 
and covered with crops. Already most of it is dotted 
with groves containing comfortable homes, built up 
from the profits on wheat and live stock. 

In all new sections of the middle northwestern 
prairies the pioneers from choice, from necessity and 
for the profits and quick returns, and for other good 
reasons, demanded of their fields a too continuous 
cropping to grain, which cannot be continued in- 
definitely. The pioneer system of field and farm man- 
agement is only a temporary expediency. In the 
older regions the farmers early learned that not more 
than one-third of the land should be asked to pro- 
duce grain for sale, the other two-thirds or more 
being used to produce crops fed to live stock, most 

25 



of the substance being returned in the form of fertility 
to keep up and even enrich the soils found so fertile 
in their virgin state. Gradually a system of perma- 
nent management is being wrought out. The grains, 
the grasses, including the common clovers; and the 
cultivated crops are being combined in rotations, with 
as many field divisions as there are years in the rota- 
tion, that there may be approximately the same 
acreage devoted to each crop each year. A new 
crop, as hardy alfalfa, occasionally comes forward, 
causing a change in the rotation plan. Steel wire 
fences have made it economical to fence each field, 
and since these fences may be so easily changed to 
new field lines, the farm may easily be reorganized 
so that the desired number of fields of a given size 
may be secured. The state and national governments 
are gathering detailed data as to the cost of growing 
each crop by many farmers who gladly co-operate 
with route statisticians who visit each farmer daily. 
Systems of farm management and of keeping accounts 
are being thus worked out by the agricultural col- 




MINNESOTA FARM SCENE. 

leges co-operating with the United States Department 
of Agriculture, that farmers may know which crops 
give the largest net profit per acre, and in which 
order of sequence they best grow in the rotation. 
The efifort is to so arrange in the rotation those best 
paying crops that each crop has the land prepared 
for it by the preceding crop, and that the entire se- 
ries of crops will be the most profitable and will 
build up rather than deplete the fertility of the soil. 
Rotation schemes which have been proven profitable 
at the Experiment Stations and on practical farms 
are as follows: (i) First year, wheat; second and 
third years, grass; fourth year, oats or barley; fifth 
year, corn. (2) First year, wheat; second, third, and 
fourth years, grass; fifth and sixth years, oats, barley, 
flax or wheat; seventh year, corn. (3) First year, 
grain; second and third years, grass; fourth year, 
corn; fifth year, grain; sixth year, corn. (4) First 
year, grain; second year, fodder corn; third and fourth 
years, grain; fifth year, corn; alfalfa on the sixth field 
lays six years and alternates with the five year rotation. 

Southern Minnesota. 

The southern part of the state has so far passed 
through the pioneer stage of agricultural development 
that good buildings have been built, wells supply ex- 
cellent water everywhere, orchards of hardy fruits are 
being developed and farm gardens are a part of every 

27 



country home. The business with field crops and 
with live stock has been well organized, though the 
enterprising people are still introducing new crops 
and new kinds of live stock. The farmers are more 
and more alert to improvements in the plan of manag- 
ing the farm and in the introduction of new ma- 
chinery. The improvement of live stock, corn and 
other crops by breeding them is one of the recognized 
industries. Every person who has seen the corn and 
clover belt of the upper Mississippi Valley, the great- 
est and richest agricultural region of the world, knows 
southern Minnesota. The climate is a little colder than 
northern ^Missouri, and its people have a larger portion 
of north European blood in the race-forming mixture. 
Hardier plants, hardier animals, snugger homes, 
broader and denser windbreaks, better barns and more 
constant sleighing make up the chief differences. The 
diversity of crops, the proportion of plant products 
made to go to market "on foot," and the amount of 
farmers' money in banks, are k about the 

same as farther south. The trans- I portation fa- 

cilities, the markets, the 3HHr^|f schools and 
the churches excel. This re- ^^U, gion is set- 
tling down to making such \^^Pt large profits 




TYPICAL FARM BUILDINGS ON MINNESOTA 
PRAIRIES. 

on its present land valuations that prices are certain 

to rise, making investment here more promising than 

in some older regions where prices have gone nearer 

the productive capacity of the soils. 

The Great Pine Woods. 

Two-fifths of Minnesota, lying in the central and 
northeastern portions of the state, were covered with 
deciduous and coniferous forests, magnificent in char- 
acter and area, and most valuable in economic qual- 
ity. The woodsman has skimmed ofi the cream, so 
far as lumber is concerned, but he has uncovered vast 
areas of land for farm homes. Here remains one of 
the regions where the homeseeker with limited means 
can still find lands at a low price. The state and na- 
tion are taking steps to show him how to judge in 
selecting only the good soils for farming, that the 
sandy lands best suited to leave for growing pine may 
be managed by the state, that future generations may 

28 



have crops of lumber The great areas of clay lands 
in the timbered areas, most of which bore "hardwood" 
timber, are to-day selling farther below their real 
value than the lands on the borders of the semi-arid 
regions, where the rainfall is deficient, or than some 
of the lands of the corn belt, where prices have soared 
above the prices possible for the poor man to pay. 
The peaty soils also have a value, especially where 
they may serve as meadow or pasture lands adjacent 
to the clay lands under the plow. While the work 
of clearing the new farm year by year is tedious, yet 
the owner can look forward to a very large increase 
in the selling prices of his land. This region remains 




MINNESOTA PIXB. 
the one place where the man can "grow up with the 
country." While the children are coming to maturity 
and the farm is being equipped, the mere increase in 
value of the land will be a very good profit, and will 
form a comfortable "estate" to leave. The world has not 
yet found a better place to raise a strong race of boys 
and girls than in the rapidly developing pioneer home, 
on land sufficiently rich in productive capacity to pro- 
vide means with which to send the nearly mature youth 
away for a goodly period at high school and college. 

Northwestern Minnesota. 

The valley of the Red River of the North, form- 
ing the northwestern fifth of the state, is famous be- 

29 




TYPICAL LARX AND GRAIN STACKS. 

cause of its level floor of the blackest, richest, deepest, 
most enduring soil which contains almost centuries of 
wheat crops of a quality which makes Minneapolis 
famous for her brands of flour. Here, Nature, in one 
of her colder moods, used a great ice sheet with which 
to paint upon the surface of a lake-bed a layer of 
rich soil, not rivaled by any unless it be in the valley 
of the Nile, where Nature each year adds a new silt 
layer of soil a little richer than that spread on be- 
fore. This wheat valley, this adopted home of flax, 
this region where the cow and the wheat produce 
bread and butter in ample proportions; this land is 
producing farm homes and protecting them by planted 
groves. The northern races are here adding to the 
stature they brought from the old world; and 
their mental girth has been expanded by this free 
soil, by the schools for farmers, by the periodicals 
under free mail, and by the impulse of wealth and op- 
portunities, so that they think in terms not only of the 
country, the state and the nation, but they are in 
touch with the pulsations of world affairs. Wheat 
and flax, aided by the cow and the plants to feed her, 
are bringing riches to this region, and people who 
make homes in the north are developing that same 
affection for their homes that is realized by the home 
makers of the Suuny Southland. Cheap, long distance 
transportation for concentrated dairj' products, made 
chiefly in winter, with labor which is required in sum- 
mer by the grain crops, co-operative creameries and 
cheese factories, which take from the housewife the 
burdens of the dairy, form combinations of farm in- 
dustries which not only give profits, but result in 
building ideal homes and a beautiful country life. The 
rugged statesmen, the able business atid professional 
men, the stalwart farmers and the superb mothers 




A MINNESOTA CORN FIEIvD. 



being produced by this region forecast its great and 
prosperous future. The shortness of the cropping 
season, the low temperatures of winter, are difficulties 
that do not enervate. The people, compelled to work 
rapidly in summer to take fullest advantage of the 
short crop season with very long days of brightest 
sunshine, and impelled by cold winter to remain act- 
ive, have the habit of being alert. Overcoming the 
difficulties is making of them a strong people. Great- 
ness in athletics, in business, in professions ixvA in 
public service awaits the race which wrestles with 
rugged nature, as proof of which follow the Scot 
and the New Englander. The processes of breeding 
hardy races of men, plants and animals suited to this 
region are already operating. Institutions for educa- 
tion and research have already become recognized 
agencies of greatest power in this valley, and they are 
but yet in their infancy. Here, where the real land 
■-"hies arc still much above selling prices, the young 



t 




HYBRIDIZING WHEAT. 

farmer may go with assurance that the richest soils 
will be an enduring foundation for a lucrative farm 
business and an ever secure support for a well organ- 
ized country home life. 

Statistics of Farm and Country Life. 

Minnesota had 1,751,394 people in 1900; 22.1 on 
each of her 79,205 square miles of territory; an increase 
of over 40,000 annually since 1870; and now doubtless 
has between 1,900,000 and 2,000,000. Half of these 
people live on the 154,659 farms. These farms aggre- 
gate 18,442,585 acres of improved land, 82.7 per cent 
of which is farmed by the owners, 14 per cent by share 
tenants and 3.3 per cent by tenants paying cash rent, 
while mortgage sales are very rare. Of these improved 
acres nearly two-thirds are in grains, more than one- 
third producing hard, red, spring wheat. The average 
farm contains 169.7 acres, of which 119.3 are improved 
and 50.4 are unimproved. The farms average in value 

32 



$5,100, of which $713 is in the buildings. Land may 
be purchased at $1.25 to $125, owing to quahty and 
market facilities. For each farm there are 1.7 workers 
or one worker to each 100 acres of farm, or of 70 acres 
of improved land. The product is $827 per farm, $517 
per worker; a grand total plant and animal product 
of $161,217,304. In 1899, with farm property worth 
789 millions of dollars, of which 559 millions was land, 
no millions buildings, 89 millions live stock, and 30 
millions implements and machinery, Minnesota pro- 
duced 161 millions of dollars worth of products, of 
which 33 millions were fed to animals and 128 millions 
were not fed on the farm. Her animal products were 
45J2 millions, her crop products 113 millions and her 
forest products 2i/> millions. This state has 1,751,394 
people living on farms, 258.944 of whom are agri- 
cuhinal workers, of whom only 6,815 are women, each 




HYBRIDIZING FI,AX. 

worker caring for 71.2 acres of improved land. There 
are 152,393 farm homes, about 83 per cent of which are 
owned and 17 per cent rented. The average value per 
farm is $5,100, or $3,000 per agricultural worker; while 
the average annual product per farm is $827, and the 
average value produced per worker is $495. 
Societies, Departments and Publications. 
Agriculture is being promoted in Minnesota by 
various general agencies. An excellent system of 
farmers' institutes, or traveling farmers' schools, has 
done a wonderful work in the past eighteen years and 
is a grovying influence. Scores of meetings of a week 
or less in duration are held annually in the larger 
towns. Specialists instruct and interest men and wo- 
men in seeking all available information concerning 
the farm and the farm home. The farmers' institute 
annual is a bound book of several hundred pages, 

34 



treating of country artairs, and througii distribution 
from the institute platform it is added annually to 
twenty thousand libraries in farm homes. The State 
Agricultural Society conducts the largest state fair on 
the continent, its annual receipts being over $160,000. 
It holds an annual winter meeting, the proceedings of 




which are published in an annual report; and at this 
meeting is held a competitive exhibit of field seeds. 
The State Horticultural Society has an active mem- 
bership of over 1,400, the largest society of its kind 
in America. It publishes a monthly journal and an 

35 




NEW HYBRID WHEAT. 

annual report, and many of its members assist the 
horticultural division of the experiment station in test- 
ing and improving horticultural crops. That such a 
society is possible in a climate so far north illustrates 
two important facts. The people are energetic in over- 
coming difficulties, and they are actually succeeding in 
adapting fruits to the climatic conditions in spite of 
cold temperatures in winter. The State Dairy Asso- 
ciation has a large place in ivlinnesota agriculture and 
is closely associated with the dairy division of the State 
Experiment Station and the State Dairy Commission. 
These three agencies, all of which issue reports, have 
most forcefully illustrated the fact that a great industry 
may be powerfully promoted by voluntary organiza- 
tions and by state departments. The co-operative 
creameries and cheese factories, better cows, superior 
shipping facilities for dairy products, improved meth- 




TIMOTHY AND CI^OVER, NEAR PRINCETON. 

Cut 4% Tons Per Acre. 
36 



ods of feeding and breeding dairy cattle, modern ways 
of caring for milk, so as to relieve the farmer's wife, 
have all been materially promoted by these agencies, 
and the state is in the front ranks of dairy production, 
both as to quantity and quality. The Minnesota Im- 
proved Live Stock Breeders' Association has recently 
begun most important work in promoting the breed- 
ing of pedigreed animals. One or more meetings, 
are held annually and an annual report is issued. The 
^linnesota Field Crop Breeders' Association has been 
recently organized by the breeders and growers of 
seed corn, seeds of the small grains, and seed clovers 
and other forage crops. Many of its members are co- 
operating with the agricultural division of the Experi- 
ment Station in the breeding of field seeds, and in 
bringing into general commercial use newly bred 
varieties which yield more value per acre. The Min- 
nesota Forestry Association is coming out victor in a 
long continued struggle to secure state and national 
control of part of such lands as are better suited to 




WINNEBAGO VAI.I^EV, SOUTHERN MINNESOTA. 

forest crops than to general agriculture. The ^linne- 
sota Farmers' Club is a young organization of all who 
have attended the Agricultural High School, and has 
a county organization in most counties. It is becom- 
mg a power, as is also the Alumni Association of the 
School of Agriculture. This last named organization 
publishes a most excellent agricultural paper. The 
beekeepers have a good organization, as do also the 
buttermakers, the promoters of good roads and others 
interested in minor lines of agricultural advancement. 

Besides the two agricultural papers named above, 
published by societies, there are several strong agri- 
cultural periodicals published in the state. The farm- 
ers' institutes and other agencies devoted to building 
up agriculture have greatly promoted subscriptions to 
farm papers. The fact that these papers are sent by 
the hundred thousand to subscribers in Minnesota at- 
tests to their excellent character and to the intelligent 
enterprise of our farmers. 



37 



LIVE STOCK IN MINNESOTA. ^ 

By Prot. Tbos. Shaw, Editor The Farmer, St. Paul. 
Previous to the middle of the last century nearly 
all of Minnesota was uninhabited except by some 
tribes of Indians who sought a precarious livelihood 
by hunting over its prairies and in its forests and sup- 
plementing the products of the chase by fishing in its 
rivers and lakes. In but few of the magnificent coun- 
ties even of southern Minnesota had a furrow been 
turned with a plow. The gopher made his burrow in 
the prairies and the coyote sought his prey practically 
unscared. These facts should not be lost sight of by 
those who study the condition of live stock at the 
present time in ]Minnesota. 

Influences Adverse to Live Stock Production. 
During the earlier decades of settlement in IMinne- 
sota, but little attention was given to the growing of 
live stock. Certain influences operated against the 
industry and greatly retarded its progress. Chief 
among these were the following: — First, the effort of 
the settlers was to grow grain only and principally 
wheat. They obtained their lands chiefly as home- 
steads. They laid open the bosom of the prairie with 
the plow, sowed and reaped and sold, and bought more 
land though labormg not more than half the year. 
Why should they worry about live stock, they were 
always ready to answer, when they could obtain a 
competence thus easy. Second, many of the early 
settlers were men who knew but little about agri- 
culture when they settled on their lands. It was com- 
paratively easy to learn to grow wheat on virgin soils. 
It was more complex to learn to grow live stock. 
They naturally did what was easy to do. Even to this 
day on areas of more recent settlement, farmers are 
pursuing precisely the same methods, and, judging 
by the past, many of them will continue to do so, un- 
til compelled to grow live stock as others were in older 
settlements because of waning fertility and the advent 
of certain insect and parasitic troubles which preyed 
upon the wheat. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
under such conditions, in 1880, only 23 years ago, there 
were only 934,595 cattle in the state, only 257,282 
horses and only 267,598 sheep and 381,415 swine. In 
1850 the number of cattle in the state was 2,002, horses 
860, sheep 80, and swine 734. In 1900 the cattle num- 
bered 1,305,331, the horses 650,965, the sheep 359,328 
and the swine 1,440,806. These figures are taken from 
the United States census returns for 1900. Later sta- 
tistics that are reliable relating to agriculture have 
not been published, a fact that is not creditable to Min- 
nesota. 

Conditions Favorable to Live Stock Production 

The writer has stated once and again the convic- 
tion that the day is not far distant when Minnesota 
will stand high, if not indeed first, in the production of 
live stock and live stock products among all the states 

33 



of the Union. This statement is made in full knowl- 
edge of the fact that the farmers of the favored corn 
belt will incredulously smile when they read it. The 
reasons for this faith will now be given. They rest 
upon conditions that relate to soil, food products, wa- 
ter supplies, climate and marketing facilities. 

Soil. Much of the soil of Minnesota is possessed 
of an amazing fertility. Particularly is this true of 
nearly all the soil covering the natural prairie, and 
about half of the state is natural prairie. In the por- 
tion covered by forest the soil is not so uniformly 
good, but much of it is excellent there also. On Min- 
nesota soils as many as 25 crops of wheat have been 
grown in succession, nearly all of which have been 
large and \yithout the application of a pound of fertil- 
izer. In the Red River Valley, soil taken from the 














A FIELD OF RYE. 
At Minnesota Experiment Station. 

depth of So feet below the surface has been found 
capable of producing and maintaining an abundant 
production. The state embraces a wide range of soils, 
nearly all of which are easy of tillage, and this in 
part explains why so great a variety of food products 
can be grown as is mentioned below. 

Food Products. In addition to wheat, which is 
frequently fed to live stock because of its abundance, 
our state grows magnificently all the other small cereal 
grains, as oats, barley, rye, speltz, flax and in much of 
the state Canada field peas. In the flax crop it 
stands second, and in the oat crop fifth among the 
states. Properly tilled, its lands will always stand 
high relatively in the abundance of the yields in small 
cereals, owing to the favorable climatic conditions. 
The hot waves which sometimes blast the prospects 

39 



of the husbandman further south are almost entirely 
absent in Minnesota. 

In fodder production no state is the peer of Minne- 
sota. As much fodder corn may usually be grown 
on an acre of land in Kittson county, bordering on 
Manitoba, as can be grown on a similar area in Iowa. 
As much sorghum may be grown on an acre of Alinne- 
sota soil as may be obtained from an acre of Louisi- 
ana soil. ^Minnesota is a paradise for growing grain 
in mixtures for fodder uses or to be fed as succotash. 

The natural adaptation of both soil and climate for 
hay production is excellent. Timothy will grow well 
in all parts of the state and the same is true of Russian 
brome grass. Clover will grow successfully in nearly 
all parts of the state. In all the northern half of the 
same, east of the Red River Valley, it grows like a 
weed. By simply scattering the seed it will grow up 
abundantly in land covered with brush, where the 
shade is not too dense. The writer has seen common 
red clover 7^ feet high, which grew thus among the 
brush. Even Indiana, the great clover state of the 
Union, falls below this region in natural adaptation 
for growing clover. Large fields of alfalfa are now 
being grown in various areas, and there are good 
reasons for believing that soon alfalfa will be grown 
more or less in every county of the state. Millet in near- 
ly all its forms produces excellent crops of hay and 
grain, the yields of which in many instances, are phe- 
nomenally large. The state has uncommon adaptation 
for growing pumpkins and squashes, and in the south- 
ern half of the same some varieties of cow peas and 
soy beans will mature their seeds in an average season. 

Much of the state has high adaptation for the pro- 
duction of pastures. Blue grass will flourish on every 
foot of arable land in the state. The same is true of 
Russian brome grass and of winter rye grown for 
pasture or for the grain. All the good kinds of clover, 
as the medium red, the mammoth, the alsike and the 
small white, can be grown in pastures and usually 
in the same pastures. Redtop grows magnificently on 
all the lower lands. Timothy is found in nearly all 
sown pastures, and even meadow fescue and tall oat 
grass will do well in areas in Minnesota. 

Field roots of all kinds can be grown in Minnesota, 
as rutabagas, turnips, mangels and carrots. For the 
growth of mangels and carrots the adaptation is ex- 
ceptionally high. Potatoes also grow so well that 
they are frequently so plentiful as to justify feeding 
them to live stock, hence, in all parts of the state, the 
stockman can supplement dry fodders where ensilage 
is not fed. with those kinds of food which have done 
so much to make the live stock of Ontario so famous. 
Ensilage also may be made and used to any extent 
that the growers may desire. 

]\Iill foods also should always be more cheap and 
abundant in Minnesota than in any other state in the 
Union, since more of these are manufactured in our 
state than in any other. Minneapolis is the greatest 

40 



center for the manufacture of the by-products of wheat 
in the world, and it is also the greatest center for the 
manufacture and distribution of other kinds of ground 
food for live stock. The Minnesota farmer, being 
nearer to the base of these supplies than others, can 
procure them more cheaply. The Alinnesota dairy- 
man who feeds those products, such as bran, shorts 
and coarse grains ground, or the by-products of these, 
has a very decided advantage over the Massachusetts 
dairyman who buys and feeds the same. The same 
line of reasoning will apply to the growing of beef 
and pork, and also of mutton from the screenings so 
plentiful in that milling center. 

Water Supplies. Everybody knows the close re- 
lation between water supplies abundant and pure, and 
successful live stock production. The latter cannot 
be where the former is not, and this statement applies 
most of all to successful dairying. On some of the 
western ranges the grasses are never eaten closely 
because good water has not yet been obtained in suf- 
ficient quantities on these. Minnesota is famous for 
her water supplies. That she is deservedly so will 
be at once apparent when it is estimated that 10,000 
lakes are within her borders. True, many of these 
are small, not much more than ponds, but it is also 
true that several of these are miles in diameter and 
many of them are much larger than a good sized farm. 
In the aggregate they cover 3.608,012 acres of the en- 
tire area of the state. Rivers and streams are numer- 
ous, and in almost every part of the state water can be 
obtained in unfailing supply by sinking wells to a rea- 
sonable distance below the surface. The character of 
the water is also of the best; were it not so, Minne- 
sota could never have attained that enviable position 
which she now occupies in dairy production. 

Climate. The abundant food products and the il- 
limitable supplies of food would not in themselves 
avail to place Minnesota in the front rank to which 
she is coming as a live stock producing state, were 
these not supplemented with a favorable climate. The 
air of Minnesota is so pure that malarial diseases can- 
not live within her borders. When persons shaking 
with ague migrate to this state, they shake no more. 
This statement will excite no wonder when it is men- 
tioned in this connection that there are hundreds if 
not thousands of bodies of water within the state that 
have no visible outlet. Malarial disease germs can- 
not emanate from these in the presence of air so pure. 
True, the climate is cold in winter, but it is a steady 
and a dry cold. Because of this, live stock are al- 
ways ready and eager for their food, a condition es- 
sential to the most profitable kinds of live stock pro- 
duction. The amount of sunshine in winter is in a 
sense proverbial, hence it is that live stock in Minne- 
sota fatten more profitably in winter in yards with 
shed protection than m stables and tied in the stall. 
The steady character of the winter weather and the 
sunshine give the Minnesota feeder a decided advan- 

41 



tage in winter over feeders in the more changeable 
winter weatiicr further south. 

Market Conditions. No state is more happily 
situated with relation to markets for live stock or live 
stock products. Three great and growing cities are 
within her borders, that is, St. Paul, Minneapolis and 
Duluth. These will always be great consuming cen- 
ters. At South St. Paul are stockyards larger in area 
than those in Chicago, and with a rapidly increasing 
volume of trade. IMore than twenty lines of railroads 
carry commerce through the state, some of them being 
trans-continental lines. The market facilities, there- 
fore, for live stock, could scarcely be better. Are 
there not good reasons for the faith that ^Minnesota 
will yet stand high, if not indeed first, in the produc- 
tion of live stock and live stock products among all 
the states in the Union? 

The Dairy Industry. 

The cattle industry in the state is two-fold, embrac- 
ing dairying and beef production. The former is at 
the present time the much more important industry of 
the two and so it is likely to remain. This is owing 




TYPICAL -MINNESOTA PRAIRIE FARMSTEAD HOME- 

first, to the delusive belief long cherished that beef 
could not be profitabh' made in a state in such close 
proximity to the western ranges, a delusion that was 
rather fostered than dispelled by erroneous teaching 
in earlier years on the part of some who posed as 
guardians of public thought in this line. Second, to 
the natural tastes of the settlers. A very large num- 
ber of these are of Scandinavian and German origin, 
hence they have come from countries where much 
more attention is given to dairying than to meat pro- 
duction. Third, the returns from dairying art relat- 
ively large and they come in through all the year. It 
would probably be correct to say that the dairy in- 
dustry has done more for the farmers of the state than 
any other line of live stock production, and it is by far 
the largest and most important industry in this line. 

The United States census gives the milch cows in 
the state in 1850 as 607, in i860 as 40.344- in 1870 as 
121,467, in 1880 as 225,545, in 1890 as 593-9o8 and in 
1900 as 75.3,632. The increase in the number of the 
milch cows therefore has been rapid and continuous. 
In the Ninth Biennial Report of the State Dairy and 

42 



Food Commission, published in 1902, the number of 
cows furnishing milk to creameries, not including 
cheese factories, was. in 1901, 382,356. It is thus appar- 
ent, therefore, that the milk, from about one-half the 
cows in the state is sent to the creamery. Sometimes 
the separating is done on the farms, at other times at 
skimming stations, and yet again it is separated at the 
creamery. It is well that so large a proportion of the 
butter is made at creameries, as the average quality of 
the same is much higher than when made on the farm. 

The extension of the creamery business has been 
marked during recent years. In 1899 the number of 
creameries in the state was 582. In 1901 it had in- 
creased to 6S1. Of these 526 were conducted on the 
co-operative plan and 155 were owned privately. The 
value of the creamery butter in 1899 was about $9,000,- 
000. In 1901 it had increased to $13,909,897. The 
quality of the butter ranks high in the markets of the 
continent and brings top prices. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that Minnesota should have scored more 
victories at leading fairs during recent years for high 
class butter than any other state in the Union. Butter 
from this state won a medal at the world's fair held in 
Paris in 1900. 

The prosperous condition of the dairy industry in 
the state is not accidental. Some of the causes have 
been given. In addition to these, it may be said that 
the natural conditions for dairying are of the best and 
the industry has been greatly fostered by instructions 
given at the School of Agriculture and on the Farmers' 
Institute platforms. Instruction is given in home 
dairying at the former to both men and women. A 
special course is also conducted in dairying at which 
instruction is given relating to work as conducted in 
creameries and cheese factories. At the various 
farmers' institutes held from year to year, a relatively 
large proportion of the time occupied by speakers has 
pertained to dairy matters and these discussions have 
been supplemented by demonstration work in dairy- 
ing, as, for instance, churning and testing milk on the 
institute platforms. The State Dairy and Food Com- 
mission, liberally supported by the legislature of the 
state, have also sent traveling instructors into the field, 
who in the creamery or the cheese factory have given 
help to those who may have needed it. 

While the natural conditions for cheese production 
are unexcelled on the continent, the cheese industry 
has not greatly extended. In 1902 there were but 54 
cheddar cheese factories in the state. According to 
United States census returns, the manufacture of 
cheese had fallen from 676,642 pounds in 1890 to 290,- 
623 pounds in 1900, There are good reasons for be- 
lieving that the industry has materially advanced since 
igoo. but even now there is not one cheese factory in 
the state for every ten that it could sustain without 
interfering in any way with the making of butter. The 
principal reason for the backward condition of the 
cheese industry is that it has not been pushed, being 

43 



overshadowed by the creamery industry. Even the 
latter, large and prosperous as it is, can be greatly 
extended. While Minnesota has a land surface of 53,- 
335,367 acres, only 19,000,000, or a little n;ore than a' 
third of the same, has been improved. 

The Beef Cattle Industry. 
The beef cattle industry is only in its infancy. In 
1900 the total number of cattle in the state was 2,624,- 
957, including dairy cows, and excluding these it was 
1,871,325. There is no means of knowing how many 
cattle are fattened in the state, for the reason that no 
reliable statistics are gathered on the subject. But it 
is certainly small compared with what it may be and 
will be in coming years. The magnificent adaptation 
of the state for this industry finds illustration in the 
long line of food products grown as outlined above. 
The adaptation of the climatic conditions is equally 
high. In the state of Illinois an experiment is in prog- 
ress intended to show the farmers how much they lose 
by allowing their beef cattle to wade in the mud during 




MINNESOTA CATTI,E. 

soft weather in the winter and spring. States in the 
distinctive corn belt generally are watching this ex- 
periment with much approval and interest, since the 
outcome will apply to their conditions. The results 
of this experiment will prove of little value to the 
farmers of Minnesota, since, happily, in our state there 
is of necessity little or no mud at the seasons men- 
tioneu. 1 lie steady wniter climate excludes it. The 
appetite of the animals is always good, hence the 
average gains of beef cattle that are being finished for 
the block must be greater in our state than those of 
cattle similarly fed in the areas just referred to. The 
fattening can be done as well and better in open sheds 
with sunny and protected yards, than when the ani- 
mals are tied in stalls, as has been demonstrated at the 
State Experimental Station, thus reducing the fatten- 
ing problem to a very simple one. The magnificent 
natural adaptation of IMinnesota to the production of 
beef cattle has been clearly demonstrated by the great 
victories won in show rings by animals from the herds 

44 



of H. F. Brown of Minneapolis, N. P. Clark, St. Cloud, 
and others, with Minnesota bred animals, though com- 
peting against the world. 

Minnesota is happily situated with reference to the 
supplies of cattle for fattening. These will come from 
two sources. First, the animals will be grown upon 
the farms. They will come from the cows of dual 
types, that is, cows good for both meat and milk pro- 
duction. The milk of those cows will be separated 
and fed to their calves, the cream being manufactured 
into butter at the creamery or at home. These calves, 
while growing up to the fattening period, will turn 
coarse foods, which could not in any other way be so 
well utilized, into meat, and when sufficiently grown 
these animals will be finished on the farms and sent 
to the block under 30 months of age and at weights 
of 1,200 to 1,400 pounds. This class of cows is be- 
coming greatly popular in the state, and this method of 
growing beef is finding much favor. This method of 




STUDENTS AT THE SCIIOOI, OF ACRICUL,TURE 
JUDGING CATT1,E. 

growing beef will soon remove what has been a stigma 
on live stock production in the state. Many of the 
farmers who kept cows sold their calves at one year or 
younger to ranchmen, who took them out to western 
ranges to be grown on these. In fact this practice 
was generally prevalent during the closing decade of 
1900. It meant that the Minnesota farmer sold what, 
if kept on the farm and grown as outlined above, would 
have become to him an important source of revenue. 
Happily this folly is materially growing less in the state. 
Second, cattle grown on the ranges are shipped in 
immense numbers every autumn to the stockyards of 
South St. Paul. These are usually not prime for the 
block. This means that farmers can easily secure 
stockers for winter fattening, which they can usually 
feed at a good profit in the winter on foods chiefly 
grown on the farm. Experiments at the state station 
have shown that such cattle have practically doubled 
in value during a period of five to six months' feeding. 
The door of opportunity that is thus opened to the 

45 



farmers is literally without limit. This, therefore, may 
become and is likely to become one of the most 
gigantic industries in the state. When that better day 
arrives, the immense flax crop of the state, 90 per cent 
of which is now shipped to Europe to be fed to cattle 
which finally compete with ours in European markets, 
will be fed in Minnesota. 

The Horse Industry. 

It cannot be said of Minnesota that she has become 
a noted center for the breeding of horses. She is not 
famous, for instance, as Kentucky is, for producing 
trotters, and yet Minnesota has bred many good trot- 
ters. She is not as famous as Illinois and Ontario, for 
instance, for breeding heavy draughts, and yet, some 
of the best studs of draught horses in the Union, 
Clj'des, Shires, Percheron and other types, are found 
in Minnesota. The same is true of coachers and some 
other classes. From Ivlinnesota studs, notably that of 
N. P. Clark, St. Cloud, home grown horses have won 
highest honors at the most famous shows of America, 
facts which bear on the high natural adaptation of the 
state for such production. The want of high natural 
adaptation to any line of live stock in Minnesota has 
never been an obstacle in the way of its extension. 
Our want is rather that of men who will center their 
energies on live stock production rather, than on the 
never ending growing of grain which is being sold 
from ofif the farms. 

The horse industry has made steady and continuous 
progress in the state. In 1890 the horses numbered 
593,908. In igoo the number had increased to 650.965. 
The supply of horses, therefore, is not more than will 
meet the needs of the state at the present time. As- 
suming that it has increased considerably it would 
mean that on the average there are only about five 
horses kept on each Minnesota farm. The field, there- 
fore, for breeding horses in Minnesota, especially 
draught horses, is as large as the farmers of the present 
or the future may desire to make it. 

The facilities are also at hand for the fattening of 
horses and for otherwise preparing them for the mar- 
kets, as is done in places farther east. They can be 
secured in any numbers that may be desired from the 
ranges. Many range grown horses come across the 
state on the way to eastern markets. In no state is 
food more abundant for putting these in condition for 
the market, and in no state are the climatic conditions 
more favorable to such feeding and otherwise prepar- 
ing those animals for future work. 

The Sheep Industry. 

Sheep husbandry has never been given a tithe of 
the attention in the state which its importance de- 
mands. However, the increase in the numbers of 
sheep kept was gradual and continuous until, say 1890. 
At that time there were 399.049 sheep in the state. 
In 1900 the number had fallen to 359,328, that is to 
say, at that time there was only one sheep in the state 

46 



for every 148 acres of land surface in the same. In 
Other words, the number of the sheep in the state in 
igoo could have been multiplied by ten and still it 
would have been entirely too few to crop down the 
weeds even that grew in by-places on the arable farms 
of the state. According to the legislative manual com- 
piled for the legislature of 1903, the number of sheep 
in 1902 had increased to 600,000. The figures look 
suspicious, as, although sheep are rapidly increasing 
in the state, it is not probable that the increase is so 
great as these figures would indicate. Granting that 
they are correct, it means that at the beginning of 1903 
there was but one sheep in Minnesota to every 88 acres 
of land surface, and this in a state pre-eminently adapt- 
ed to sheep husbandry. The decline in the sheep in- 
dustry during the last decade — 1890-1900 — followed 
congressional legislation soon after the national elec- 
tion in the autumn of 1892, and was doubtless a direct 
result of the same. 




■J^. 




COMING HOME FROM RAPE FIEIvDS, 
WESTERN MINNESOTA. 

It has been stated that Minnesota is pre-eminently 
adapted to sheep husbandry. This would be self-evi- 
dent to any one who understands the requirements of 
sheep husbandry and the way these are met in our 
state. Sheep require undulating land— undulating land 
covers more than three-fourths of the state. It calls 
for a soil free from stagnant water — much more than 
three-fourths of the soil in the state is of this character. 
It wants a bright winter climate — a brighter winter' 
climate than ours can be found in but few places on 
the continent. It demands good and varied pastures 
— these are present within all our borders. The rape 
pastures of Minnesota are becoming proverbial — from 
ten to fifteen head can be fattened for the market on 
every acre of these in the autumn when properly 
grown. It asks for varied food products in the line of 
fodders, grains and roots — no state can furnish these 
in greater variety. 

The high adaptation of the state to sheep husbandry 
has been amply demonstrated at the State Experiment 

47 



Station. For several seasons in succession at that sta- 
tion, during the last decade, an average of ten sheep 
and lambs were pastured during all the grazing season 
on one acre of land. A similar number was main- 
tained in winter from the product grown on a like 
area. Some seasons there was food enough to spare 
both from the summer grazing and the winter feeding 
The pastures were sown and embraced, along with 
some grass, winter rye, oats and barley. Dwarf Essex 
rape, corn, sorghum and cabbages. The winter food 
consisted of hay, mixed grains, corn, sorghum and 
field roots. The said station also demonstrated be- 
yond the possibility of a doubt, the high quality of the 
mutton that can be grown. In 1901 and also in 1902 
it sent down each year a pen of five lambs grown on 
the farm to compete against the world at the Chicago 
international show, and with the result, that both sea- 
sons it brought home champion honors. In igoi the 
lambs won first place both alive and dead, a victory 
in mutton production that was never equalled before 
or since by sheep at this great show. 

The introduction of the rape plant into Minnesota 
bids fair to revolutionize sheep husbandry in the state. 
Many farmers sow rape along with the small cereal 
grains. They use about two pounds of seed per acre. 
Usually the rape plants grow slowly amid the grain 
and without injuring it until harvest time. After the 
grain has been harvested, unless the season is unfa- 
vorable, the rape plants grow vigorously and furnish a 
large amount of fine grazing for sheep per acre. 
Some farmers, especially in the southern part of the 
state sow rape in much of their small grain and then 
fatten sheep in the autumn on the rape, purchasing 
them at the stockyards of South St. Paul or on the 
ranges of the west. 

The door of opportunity for finishing sheep on the 
farms of the state in winter stands wide open. Sheep 
grown on the ranges of the west are shipped to stock- 
yards to be sold as stockers, or for immediate 
slaughter. The major portion of these are not in a high 
condition of finish, hence the wisdom of carrying them 
from the stockyards to the farms and giving them 
that finish that commands good prices. Hundreds of 
thousands of sheep come into the South St. Paul stock- 
yards every year. At the present time many of these 
are fattened at the stockyards, but when they are 
much of the fertility made is lost, whereas if the fat- 
tening were done on the farms, the fertilizer made 
would be applied on these, the coarse foods of the 
farm would be manufactured into a more condensed 
product and at a profit of say fifty cents to $1.50 per 
head, according to the conditions. Two lots of sheep 
could thus be fattened in succession each winter on a 
Minnesota farm. 

The conditions for fattening sheep in winter are 
superlatively good. Reference has been made to the 
wide range of foods that may be grown. In addition 
to these, wheat screenings in enormous quantities re- 

48 



suit from the cleaning of the wheat at the elevators. 
These alone, with hay, make an excellent fattening 
food. In this way much of the screenings grown 
further west find their way into Minnesota to be sold 
to feeders. In the dry, bright winter climate of the 
state, sheep feed in perfect comfort with only the pro- 
tection of a shed. The feeding process is exceedingly 
simple. The fodder given does not need to be cut nor 
does the grain need to be ground. At the Minnesota 
Experiment Station gains as high as twelve pounds a 
month have resulted from such feeding. The number 
of sheep that may be thus. fed on farms in winter is 
almost without limit. 

The room for the expansion of this profitable in- 
dustry is very great. In 1903 the number of farms in 
the state was 155,000. Now suppose that but ten head 
of sheep were introduced onto each farm, a number 
insufificient to graze down the food that now goes to 
waste on these during the summer season, it would 
mean that these farms would sustain 1.550,000 sheep 
without any cost to the farmer for food in the summer 
season. Again, take the 8,000,000 acres of land owned 
by farmers that is not yet improved. Devote it to 
sheep husbandry on the lines indicated in the practice 
of the State Experiment Station. It would mean that 
40.000,000 sheep could be sustained on this land, or 
two-thirds as many as are now kept in all the United 
States. 

The Swine Industry. 

In i8go the swine in the state numbered 853,715. 
In IQOO this number had increased to 1,440,806. The 
development of the industry therefore during recent 
years has been rapid. The bulk of the swine grown at 
present are found in the southern half of the state, 
but their growth in the northern half is e.xtending 
rapidly. There is no part of the state in which the 
swine industry may not be made to flourish and hap- 
pily no state in the Union is better adapted to the 
growth of both the lard and bacon types within its 
own borders. It is to be questioned if any other state 
is so well adapted for this dual line of work. 

The growing of corn in Minnesota is rapidly ex- 
tending. In 1901 there were planted 1,361,120 acres. 
The yield was 35,797,456 bushels. Within a few years 
the average of corn will be more than doubled, it is 
increasing so rapidly. It has been found that the 
wheat or other grain crop following corn yields from 
20 to 33 per cent more, even though the land has not 
been manured previously to the growing of the corn. 
The benefit results chiefly from the influence which the 
cultivation of the corn crop has upon the cleaning of 
the land and also upon the density of the same. The 
benefit thus resulting to the grain crop is in itself 
resulting in a rapid increase in the growth of corn. 
This, in conjunction with the increase in food which it 
furnishes, must result in a great increase in the lard 
types of swine for the growing of which corn is the 
principal food factor. 

49 








MAP OF 1 




UNTERS 
ISLAND XL Seig'*nagah 



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d! 92° -rV- 'aLLAMAKE\E" 



vl N E S O T A 



In the northern hah' of the state, the adaptation 
for the growing of swine of the bacon types is of the 
best. In 1901 the barley crop of Minnes6ta was 21.- 
680,617 bushels and the oat crop 65,734,027 bushels. 
Nearly two million bushels of winter rye were grown 
and large quantities of speltz. These foods in con- 
junction with skim milk and field roots which grow 
so well and yield so enormously in the state, are ex- 
actly adapted to the growing of bacon, as is also shorts 
manufactured in endless quantities in conjunction with 
the grinding of wheat. A succession of summer pas- 
tures for swine may be grown in great luxuriance, 
such as clover, alfalfa, rye, barley, rape, sorghum, 
peas and sweet corn. There can be no question, there- 
fore, that Minnesota in the near future will be quite 
as famous for the production of bacon as she is now 
for the production of butter. All the conditions that 
have made Ontario so famous for the production of 
tacon are present in at least equal degree in Minnesota. 
Disease is never likely to affect swine so much in 
Alinnesota as in the states of the distinctive corn belt, 
owing first, to the greater variety of the food grown 
even in the best corn growing sections of Minnesota, 
and, second, to the greater inherent stamina possessed 
by the bacon types of swine. Hog cholera does not 
prevail to any great extent in the state. If the farmers 
"would cease to bring in swine from states further 
south, it could soon be entirely obliterated. As it is, ' 
the losses from this source are insignificant compared 
with the losses in other states. The outlook for great 
■development of the swine industry in the near future 
and in all the future is very bright. 

Great Field for Growing Pedigreed Stock. 

In the judgment of the writer no state in all the 
Union furnishes so promising a field for the growing 
■of pedigreed live stock. The best thing probably that 
-could happen to the live stock industry of the state 
would be the establishment of hundreds of additional 
studs, herds and flocks of pure bred animals within its 
borders. The demand for the same within the state 
is rapidly increasing, and it is going to increase for 
■decades to come. 

Then there is the demand from states and rancnes 
further west. As regularly as the seasons come and 
go, ranchmen from the west cross Minnesota in search 
of pedigreed males. They take back car loads of these 
•every year. They scour the states further east for 
sires to be placed in their studs, to be used in their 
"herds and to head their flocks. Many car loads are 
bought every year, even in Ontario, and they go right 
across Minnesota on the way to the range country. 
There are no reasons why a large proportion of these 
animals should not be grown in this state. Ranchmen 
would not go beyond Minnesota for the purchase of 
those stocks if Minnesota could furnish them. It 
ought to furnish them. The natural conditions of 
climate, food and water for growing them are all here, 

52 



and of tlie best, as has already been shown. In more 
than one-half of the state are groves to furnish shade 
and winter protection, and in the other portions wind- 
breaks can be grown to be quite effective in keeping 
the winter winds at bay in half a dozen years. The 
state has still more timber for building uses than 
probably any east of the Rocky mountains, and other 
building materials as stone, sand and lime, are plentifi 1 
in all the grove and forest country, and also in many 
sections of the prairie. During recent years many 
within the state have begun to breed purebreds, but 
still the number is only a tittle of what it ought to be. 
Nothing has been said about the production of 
fowls, an industry that is assuming very large propor- 
tions, allhough it is still only in its beginnings. In 




A NEW KIND OF MILI^ET. 
Minnesota Experiment Station. 

1900 the chickens in the state numbered 7,730,940, the 
ducks 127,635, the geese 90,975, the turkeys 193,143, 
and the eggs produced were 43,208,130 dozens. Nor 
has anything been said about goats, which are now 
being rapidly introduced to assist in clearing the brush 
away from the millions of acres of cut-over and un- 
cleared lands in northern Minnesota, lands much of 
which when cleared are as good for the production of 
grass and many other kinds of crop as the sun ever 
rose and set upon. Are there not good reasons for 
the statement previously made, that Minnesota will 
yet stand hiph, if not indeed first, in the production of 
live stock and live stock products among all the states 
in the Union? 



52 



MINNESOTA AS A HORTICUL- 
TURAL STATE. 

Tiy Samuel B. Green, Professor of Horticulture, University of 

Minnesota. 

Horticultural Education. 

The Minnesota State Horticultural Society is one 
of the most vigorous organizations in the state and 
one of the largest, if not the largest, horticultural so- 
ciety in the United States. It had a paid membership 
of 1,430 in the year 1903. It publishes its report as a 
monthly magazine with a total issue of about 500 
pages yearly, and has ten volunteer experiment sta- 
tions which report to it. These stations are affiliated 
with the central experiment station, which supplies 
them with material for experiment .purposes. It pays 
out $350 in premiums at its two annual meetings, and 



"■im' 



ORCHARDING IN MINNESOTA. 
(After Jewell Nursery Co., I,ake City.) 

always brings out a large display of fruits and flowers. 
It is making special efforts to encourage the growing 
of apple seedlings, believing that the apple growing 
interests of this section will be very much improved 
by the introduction of new seedlings, and it is not 
uncommon to have 300 seedling varieties of apples at 
the annual exhibition. It has a standing offer of $1,000 
for a hardy, late-keeping apple adapted to this section. 
In a general way, it looks after the horticultural in- 
terests of the state. For further particulars, address 
the secretary, A. W. Latham, Minneapolis. 

The Minnesota State Agricultural Society offers lib- 
eral premiums at its annual exhibition, and thus draws 
out a magnificent collection of fruit, flowers and vege- 
tables. For displaying this exhibit, a large, modern 
exposition building is provided, 160x240 feet in size, 
and over $1,400 are offered in premiums for fruits and 

55 



flowers and $3,150 i^'" vegetables, grains and grasses. 
This exhibition lasts for six days, and it is a very po- 
tent factor in the education of our people as to the 
possibilities of horticulture in this section. 

The Central Experiment Station and School of 
Agriculture conducts experiments and gives instruc- 
tion in horticulture and forestry, as well as in other 
agricultural branches, and much interest is taken in 
these subjects. About 700 students were registered 
in the Agricultural Department of the State University 
for the year ending June, 1904. 

Fruit Growing. 

The climate of ^Minnesota is well adapted to the 
growing of all the fruits of the Northern States, ex- 
cept for a few very cold days sprinkled through our 
otherwise comfortable winters. The summers arc 
equable, and killing irost seldom occurs in the south- 




ORCHARDING IN MINNESOTA. 

crn portion until the latter part of September. a:;d in 
some years not until the middle of October. 

The study and experimentation which has been 
carried on along this line has shown the best way to 
overcome the liability of damage from severe winter 
weather, so that we now have many very successful 
orchards and small fruit plantations. The soils of 
Minnesota are well adapted to orcharding and gar- 
dening, and nowhere are there better soils. 

In fruit production in the last decade, Minnesota 
made the greatest progress of any state in the Union, 
according to the last census and the report of the 
United States pomologist, and as information as to the 
best varieties and methods of cultivation become more 
commonly known, this increase is destined to become 
nice marked. 

Minnesota produced about $550,000 worth of ap- 
ples in 1903, and the raising of some varieties of 

56 



apples in favorable orchard sites has for many years 
been regarded as a safe commercial venture. 

The introduction of hardier kinds and of better 
methods of orchard practice has resulted in widely ex- 
tending apple growing, until now apples can be safely 
planted over a large area of the state, and no farm 
need be without its home orchard. For many years 
the apple known as Duchess of Oldenburg has been 
the standard of hardiness here, and has been planted 
more than any other, which has resulted in there being 
often a "glut" of this kind in some of the smaller 
places in August. But such varieties as Wealthy and 
Patten's Greening of the large apples extend the sea- 
son well into the winter and are now widely grown. 
Such hybrid crabs as Transcendent, Gideon No. 6, 
Minnesota and Florence are also common. We have 
few very large apple orchards, but many from several 
to ten acres in extent. The prices obtained here for 
summer and autumn apples of good quality are seldom 
less than one dollar per bushel. 

Plum. — No other wild fruit found in this country 
is superior to our native plum, and the last decade 
marks a decided advance in the cultivation of it. For- 
merly it was found wild in large quantities throughout 
the state and was an important source of fruit, but the 
plum groves have been destroyed by fire and by graz- 
ing. Our native plum is a vastly better fruit, even in 
the wild state, than were the progenitors of the plums 
commonly grown in the best sections of this country, 
and it seems to be especially susceptible to improve- 
ment. Fifteen years ago there were not more than 
half a dozen named varieties of this fruit offered by 
nurserymen, but to-day over lOO varieties can be ob- 
tained, and most of them are adapted to IMinnesota. 
Some of the varieties recently introduced have quali- 
ties which seem to promise that they will be largely 
grown for marketing. 

It is estimated that there are about 200,000 plum 
trees growing in this state, and these probably produce 
fruit to the value of about $50,000 per year. It is quite 
likely that within the next five years the yield of this 
fruit will be doubled, as it has been largely planted 
during the last few years, and many orchards have not 
come into full bearing condition. 

The native fruits that are produced in abundance 
in good years are blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, 
raspberries, grapes, wild crab apples and native plums. 
These were an important source of fruit supply to the 
early settlers, and are now used to some extent. 

The small fruit industry is on a profitable basis, 
and much of it is managed by shipping associations. 
The amount raised and marketed last year was prob- 
ably not far from $600,000 in value. 

Raspberries do excedingly well here and are per- 
haps as profitable as any small fruit that we raise. In 
some sections it is not necessary to cover the plants in 
winter, but as a rule it is regarded as profitable to do so. 

Blackberries are not generally grown, but in fa- 
vorable situations they are often exceedingly profitable. 

58 




A GROUP OF STRAWBHRKY VXCKEKS. 

Strawberries are easily grown by the methods gen- 
erally followed in older strawberry growing sections 
of this country, but a little more attention must be 
paid to keeping a dust blanket on the soil in dry sum- 
mers so as to protect from drought, and to mulching 
in winter. 

Currants and gooseberries are raised with the 
greatest ease. 

Grapes would be more generally grown v.-ere it not 
for the fact that we must compete with the grapes 
shipped in from more favorable locations, but there 
are thousands of acres of land in this state, along our 
rivers and lakes, that are adapted for raising this fruit, 
and were the price one cent per pound higher than at 
present, they would be raised in large quantities. 
Rather more care is required to raise this fruit in this 
section than in some of the Eastern States, owing to 
the fact that the vines must be protected in winter. 
The varieties grown are the popular kinds of the 
Northern States, but the Delaware does particularly 
well here in favorable locations. 

Ornamental Horticulture. 

In the pioneer stage of any country the settlers are 
generally poor, and the necessity of providing for orna- 
mental horticulture is not felt, but as wealth increases 
there is found to be time for such matters in all highly 
civilized communities. Such has been the history of 
this great state, and to-day there is great popular in- 
terest taken in gardening in all its branches, including 
public and private parks, lawns, flower borders and 
well planted streets and parkways, and the evidence 
of wealth and refinement shown in this way in Minne- 
sota speaks forcibly of the condition of our people. 
The larger cities have magnificent park and boulevard 
systems, which are well supported, and in extent and 
beauty of conception and maintenance rival the parks 
of many of the larger but older and richer cities of this 
country. The residence portions of our cities and 
towns are often tastefully laid out, and our citizens 
take much pride in their beautiful avenues, lined with 
comfortable homes, before which are well planted 
lawns and boulevards. 

The area devoted to public parks in St. Paul is 
1,300 acres, in Minneapolis 1,748 acres, and in Duluth 

59 



500 acres. There is no way of estimating the value of 
such work, as its uplifting influence is priceless. 

Commercial Floriculture. 

No branch of horticulture has shown a more phe- 
nomenal increase in Minnesota than the business of 
raising and selling flowers and ornamental plants. 
During the life of some who are still living and in 
the business, this has grown from nothing to about 
$400,000 per year. It is doubtful if there is any other 
one factor in the state that is a more certain index to 
the growth of refinement and intelligence of our peo- 
ple. This business is constantly increasing, and our 
growers have most excellent houses and up-to-date 
arrangements for the production of the best flowers. 

The Nursery Business. 

Our nurserymen are progressive and energetic, and 
as a rule aim to sell stock that is adapted to our con- 




THE PEONY BORDER. 
Minnesota Experiment Station. 

ditions. It should be more generally known that the 
climate of this portion of the great continental plain 
in which Minnesota is located is peculiar. This has 
made it necessary for the development of its horticul- 
ture that it should have a special system of its own, 
and our nurserymen take great pride in raising nur- 
sery stock that is adapted to these conditions. The 
sales of nursery stock in Minnesota each year prob- 
ably aggregate about $500,000. 

Windbreaks. 

Much attention has been and is still given to the 
making of proper windbreaks around our prairie 
homes in this section, and their value is becoming 
more and more apparent as the live stock industry 
increases, and as our population becomes more set- 
tled and desires to remain on the home farms. There 
is no way of estimating the value of such windbreaks, 
as they are not generally figured in the tax levy. 
However, there can be no question but what these 

60 



windbreaks represent an investment of several mil- 
lions of dollars, and their presence on our prairies adds 
very much to the beauty of the landscape, as well as to 
the comfort of the dwellers there and of travelers. 

Vegetable Gardens. 

Vegetable gardening is very generally practiced, 
and there are many gardens that are models, both in 
and near our towns and villages and on the farms. All 
the garden vegetables of the north temperate zone are 
grown here with the greatest ease, and it is generally 
a surprise to paryes coming here from the Eastern 
States to note the facility with which such tropical 
plants as melons, beans, corn, egg plant and tomatoes, 
and such cool climate crops as celery, cabbage and 
peas are grown. It has been estimated that the value 




189-POUND I>UMPKINS. 

of the home gardens to Minnesota cannot be less than 
$3,500,000. The climate seems to be especially favor- 
able to vegetables, and there is much less trouble from 
plant diseases than in more humid sections. 

The Trucking Business. 

About our larger cities there has been a great in- 
crease in the business of raising and shipping vege- 
tables during the last ten years. Previous to that 
time, little was done more than to supply local wants, 
but now a large amount of garden truck is shipped to 
various points outside of the city. The value of this 
trucking business in this state is probably not far 
from $1,000,000. There is about $100,000 worth of 

61 




SCENE ON HENRY SCIIRr^EDER'S FARM, NEAR 
SABIN, MINN. , 
Using four Potato Planters, Planting Twenty-five Acres Pota- 
toes Daily; 540 Acres in 1903. 

vegetables raised in greenhouses and hotbeds each 
year. This, of course, means vegetables that are sold 
during the winter, or in the early spring or summer, 
and the business is constantly increasing. 

Potatoes. 

We raise annually in Minnesota from 14,000,000 to 
18,000,000 bushels of potatoes, about 6.000,000 to 7.000,- 
000 bushels of which are annually shipped out of the 
state. The amount of potatoes grown here is increas- 
ing each year and some of our largest dealers estimate 
that in ten years we will be raising perhaps 22,000,000 
bushels. At a conservative estimate this product is 
probably worth $4,250,000. 

All the standard sorts of potatoes are grown in the 
State of ^linnesota. These are in favor for general 
consumption in the leading markets and among the 
potato growers of the Southern and Central States for 
seed stock, for which purpose many carloads are sold 
each year. While we have more or less loss from 
potato diseases, yet as a rule the plants are healthy and 
yield heavily. 




A TYPlCAIy 1-AKM HOME ON MINNESOTA PRAIRIES. 



62 



EDUCATION. 

By A. W. Rankin, State Inspector of Graded Schools. 

Not in Minnesota does the child of the state, hun- 
gry for education, ask for bread and receive a stone. 

So wisely has the landed endowment, bestowed by 
the national government on her admission to the 
Union, been husbanded, that it now amounts to some 
$15,000,000, and is steadily increasing every year. 
From the investment of this fund in choice securities 
annually flows a Pactolian stream, richly supplement- 
ing a moderate local tax, and supporting a splendid 
system of schools of all grades, from the rural pri- 
mary to the university, thus making it easily possible 
for every young Minnesotan to reach the limit of his 
or her capacity in mental acquirement. 

In common with other states and territories organ- 
ized since 1848, Minnesota received two sections of 
land in every township for purposes of public schools. 
The grant to ^Minnesota amounted to about 3,000,000 
acres, which has been carefully managed, and is sold 
under restrictions imposed by the legislature. This 
permanent endowment fund is the largest public school 
fund of any state in the Union excepting Texas, and 
invested in interest-bearing bonds yields an income 
of about $450,000 annually, and is distributed to school 
districts in proportion to their respective school pop- 
ulations. The land grant is only about one-third sold, 
and it is estimated that it will ultimately yield a perma- 
nent endowment of thirty or more millions o.f dollars. 

The national government granted land also for the 
support of the university. This land has been par- 
tially disposed of and the money received is invested 
in interest-bearing bonds. The income from this 
source is about $65,000 annually, and is used to assis; 
m paying the expenses of the university. 

In 1887 the legislature passed a bill providing for 
a mill tax to aid in the support of the schools of the 
state. This one mill tax, together with the interest 
from the permanent fund referred to above, gives the 
schools about $3.60 per pupil. 

In 1878 the legislature inaugurated the policy of 
bestowing special grants to the high schools of the 
state. This policy has expanded until the grant is ex- 
tended to the four classes of schools mentioned at the 
beginning of this article. The rural schools, employing 
a first grade teacher and having eight months of 
school, receive $125 each year; the semi-graded 
schools, $250; the graded schools, $550; the high 
schools, $1,500. In the last distribution, made in Au- 
gust, 1903, the rural schools participated to the num- 
ber of 913; the semi-graded schools to the number of 
275; the graded schools to the number of 121; the 
high schools to the number of 155. The total amount 
appropriated to the several classes was $450,000. 

This sum acts, not as an incentive to lessen local 
taxation, but rather to encourage communities partici- 
pating in the fund to support better schools. Very 

63 



few of the schools in any class fail to provide more 
money by local tax than they would were it not for the 
stimulus and encouragement given by the aid received 
from the state. 

The public school system of Minnesota has been a 
gradual development. Its progress has been a genuine 
evolution, keeping pace with that of other elements in 
the civilization of the state. While the example of 
older states has been of assistance, many new ques- 
tions have been met and solved. Absence of prece- 
dents often means absence of ruts. A community in 
the making is instinct with life. Education can never 
be healthy in a dead community where legends and 
traditions prevent independent thought. 

In the free and vigorous life of the Western pioneer 
a clearness of vision is born which will go far to effect 
a solution of the questions which have vexed humanity. 
Not the least of these questions has been the attitude 
of the state toward education. While it is generally 
conceded that the state should educate the child and 
the youth, it is not so generally granted that the state 
has a duty to the maturer citizen as regards his higher 
education. The four thousand students in the various 
departments of Minnesota's great university is an 
answer to this question by the people of the West. 
Minnesota believes in educating the child, the youth, 
the man, the farmer, the teacher, the thinker, the en- 
gineer, the professional man. She shows her faith by 
her liberality toward her common schools, toward her 
high schools, toward her normal schools, toward her 
schools for indigents and defectives, and toward her 
university. Minnesota has a heterogenous population, 
so far as nationality is concerned, but this is being 
rapidly fused by the schools into a citizenship of which 
the United States may well be proud. 

State Public School System. 

Minnesota's system of state schools is classified as 
rural, semi-graded, graded and high. These schools 
form a series leading up to the State University and 
to the normal schools. 

The class of schools designated as "rural" are, as 
the name indicates, located in country districts. They 
are one-room schools. The number of pupils in each 
varies according to the surrounding population, 
whether sparse or abundant. The teachers in these 
schools are generally certificated by the State Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, thus insuring a more 
competent body of instructors than would be available 
under less centralized authority. In fact, this method 
of certificating rural teachers is rapidly improving 
these schools. It is also creating an advance in wages, 
so that many excellent teachers now find it more prof- 
itable to teach in the country than in villages or cities. 
This is highly advantageous to the entire state, since 
upon the rural schools as a foundation rests the super- 
structure of this public system of education. 

The rural schools are supervised by county super- 
intendents elected by the people. These supervisors 
visit the schools two times or more each year. They 

64 



9 IS 



hold office for two j'ears. Minnesota has always been 
extremely fo-^nnate in having public spirited and effi- 
cient m e n and 
women largely 
, represented in its 
county superin- 
tendency. Some 
of the county su- 
perintendents, who' 
have been reelect- 
ed many times, 
are among Min- 
nesota's most es- 
teemed workers 
in education. 

The rural 
schools are sup- 
])orted mainly by 
direct local taxa- 
tion and by an an- 
nual apportion- 
ment from funds 
explained under 
the chapter on 
state aid. The 
burden of taxation 
is not heavy on 
the individual tax- 
payer. In fact, 
the tax paid by 
patrons of rural 
schools is the 
lowest among the 
taxes paid by sup- 
porters of the va- 
rious classes of 
schools. 

The buildings 
in which rural 
schools are held, 
while leaving 
much to be de- 
sired, are rapidly 
improving. Much 
attention is given 
to heating and 
ventilating prop- 
erly, and the rude, 
old-time logbuild- 
ing, with its rough 
benches, will soon, 
as far as Minne- 
sota is concerned, 
live only in the 
story of the pio- 
neer. 

The "semi-grad- 
ed school" is a 
school of two or 
three teachers. It is found in the more thickly settled 

65 




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country school aistricts. The conditions surrounding 
ihis school are much the same as are found in the 
'rural," or one-room school. The system of super- 
vision and of certification of teachers is the same 
Educationally, its advantage over the first class lies in 
Its possibility of more systematic grading of pupils, 
and in the inspiration arising from community of inter- 
est found whenever two or more associate in similar 
work. Considerable attention is now being given to 
the consolidation of two or more one-room schools 
and to the conveyance of pupils at public expense to 
the most convenient center. Sentiment in favor of 
^.consolidation is being rapidly, created, and wherever 
tried th<: plan is found to be successful. 

The "graded school" is one possessing certani 
qualitications enabling it to draw the special aid 
granted by the state to "State Graded Schools." The 
teachers in it range from four, the minimum allowed 
by law, to fifteen or twenty, as found in the larger 
villages. The law requires that the school be in ses- 
sion nine months, and that it be well equipped with 
all the apparatus and material necessary for a success- 





A NEW H.^RDY AI^FAT.FA. 
At Minnesota Experiment Station. 

ful school. These schools have a special inspector 
appointed by the state high school board, whose 
duty it is to visit them at least once each year and to 
make a report showing their condition. The course 
of study includes a thorough treatment of the common 
branches and as much of high school work as is pos- 
sible in the respective communities. The help afforded 
these schools by state aid results in a higher degree 
of efficiency in many village schools than could be 
otherwise reached. In most villages the total valua- 
tion of property to be levied upon for support of the 
schools is not large, and, obviously, without state aid, 
a much higher tax rate would be needed to keep these 
schools up to their present standard. 

The high schools of Minnesota include only those 
which furnish a full four years' course. These schools 
are liberally aided by the state and are absolutely free 
of tuition, not only to pupils within the district com- 
prising the territory taxed for each school, but also to 
any pupil in the state. Each school is inspected at 

6-0 



least once a year by an inspector appointed by the 
state high school board. A high degree of efficiency 
is demanded of any school as prerequisite to its being 
placed on the high school list. These high schools are 
also aided by a special fund distributed by the state 
high school board, thus making it possible for villages 
to have efficient high schools which would be alto- 
gether beyond their reach except for this aid furnished 
by the state. r 

Minnesota has five normal schools supported by 
state funds. These are located at Winona, Mankato, 
St. Cloud, Moorhead and Duluth, and were established 
in the order named. These cost the state for annual 
current expenses about $175,000. There are about 1,750 
pupils in the professional courses of these schools, and 
from 300 to 400 men and women are graduated each 
year. These graduates are eagerly welcomed to the 
teaching force of the state. While these normal schools 
are growing rapidly in number of pupils, the growth 
in numbers does not equal the increase of appreciation 
in which they are held, nor of desire to secure normal 
graduates as teachers. Minnesota is justly proud of 
its normal system for the education of teachers. 

In 1872, a committee consisting ^of the president 
of the state imiversity and of other educators, in dis- 
cussing the educational system of the state, assumed 
that "the State University should form the 'roof and 
crown' of a noble structure of high schools, based 
firmly on the broad foundation of the common schools 
of the state." The years since that time have seen the 
realization of what was then only a dream. The State 
University of Minnesota has nearly 4,000 students in 
attendance in all departments. Were one to charac- 
terize the work of this university he would say that 
what distinguishes it above all other state universities 
is, not so much scholarship in the old sense of that 
word, as a policy of being of service to the state in the 
present. Therefore, the departments that have most 
to do with the activities of its people are not neg- 
lected. No ancient theory of education is allowed to 
stand in the way of meeting the needs of the people, 
both in their struggle with the pests which destroy the 
crops and in their greater struggle with the ignorance 
which makes possible the rule of the demagogue. As 
a result of this commendable aim on the part of the,, 
management of the university, its attendance comes 
largely from the practical and working classes of the 
state. Hence its student body is made up of young 
men and women who are there to prepare themselves 
to serve the state as farmers and engineers, as well 
as of those who are to become professional men in 
letters, medicine and law. 

The School of Agriculture is second to no similar 
school in the world. The attendance at this school is 
increasing at a rapid rate. By wise management, 
classes are organized even for those farmers who 
must stick to their own farms during the months of 
preparation of soil and of cultivation and harvesting of 
crops. These classes are organized in January of each 

67 



year for a period of twelve weeks, and are of great 
help to many farmers who realize that the time de- 
mands more scientific agriculture than the untrained 
man can bring about. 

Besides its common system of education, which 
includes the classes of schools named above, Minne- 
sota has a school for indigent children. This school 
takes children who are deserted bj' their parents, or 
whose parents are unable to care for them, and cares 
for them until homes are found. Even then they are 
wards of the state, and are carefully looked after by 
state agents. 

There are also schools for the blind, the deaf and 
dumb, and for other defectives. These schools are 
modeled after the most approved institutions of the 
kind, and are liberally provided for. 

Minnesota has also colleges and schools supported 
by various religious denominations. Among these may 
be mentioned Carleton College at Northfield, one of 
the largest and strongest of the denominational schools 
of the state, which is supported by the Congregational 
Church. Hamline University in St. Paul is a success- 
ful Methodist college. It is acquiring a large endow- 
ment. Macalester College also is in St. Paul. This is 
a Presbyterian school, and bids fair to be an important 
factor in higher education in IMinnesota. The various 
Lutheran bodies have strong schools, notably the Gus- 
tavus Adolphus College at St. Peter, the St. Olaf's 
College at Northfield, and various seminaries and col- 
leges in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The Episcopal 
Church has noted schools at Faribault, and the Cath- 
olic Church has strong schools at St. Paul, St. Joseph 
and elsewhere. 

STATE LANDS AND TAXATION. 

By Samuel G. Iverson, State Auditor. 

Minnesota can rank as one of the older states in the 
Union, having been admitted nearly fifty years ago. 
During all these years and even back into territorial 
days it has been one of the most attractive spots in the 
United States to the landseeker in search of a home, 
or to the speculator for profitable investment. It will 
therefore be a surprise to most people to learn that 
there are still many million acres of government lands 
in Minnesota now open to entry under the public land 
laws. There are also several million acres of school 
and other state lands belonging to the trust funds of 
the state, which are still unsold, and several millions 
in the hands of private land companies or so-called 
speculators. The total area of the State of ]\Iinne- 
sota is 84,287 square miles, or a total surface of 54 
million acres. There are about 10,000 meandered 
lakes in the state, large and small, covering an area 
of about three and one-half million acres, leaving an 
actual la>:d surface of 51 million acres. 

On June 30. 190.3, the Commissioner of the General 
Land Office at Washington reports that of the 51 

68 



million acres of land in the state, 43,343,040 acres have 
been appropriated, that is, actually patented, or are 
now held under the public land laws. This leaves 
7,855,040 acres of government lands which were unap- 
propriated at that time. Of the unappropriated lands 
about 2,700,000 acres are embraced within the Indian 
reservations of the state, and which will be held as 
such for some years to come. This leaves something 
over 5,000,000 acres of vacant or unclaimed government 
lands m Minnesota. About 650,000 acres, or nearly 
thirty townships, are still unsurveyed, which leaves 
about three and one-half million acres of government 
lands now actually open to settlement or entry ur der 
the United States land laws. 

There are four United States land offices in Minne- 
sota where vacant government lands can be entered, 
at Duluth, Crookston, St. Cloud, and Cass Lake.' 
Nearly all the lands are in the northern part of the 
state, north of the main line of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad. The lands are located largely in the coun- 
ties of St. Louis, Lake, Cook, Itasca, Beltrami, Aitkin, 
Cass and Crow Wing, with scattered tracts in several 
of the other northern counties. The surface in that 
part of the state is gently rolling, and mostly covered 
with timber, principally of the pine and tamarack varie- 
ties, with occasional forests of hard wood, and some 
spruce, cedar and balsam. The land when cleared is 
very productive of all kinds of grain and vegetables; 
a very small percentage of it only is untillable. Rail- 
roads are now being built into that part of the state, 
and it will be but a short time before nearly every town- 
shipwill be within easyaccess of transportation facilities. 
The vacant and unoccupied lands in Minnesota may 
be classed under three heads: government, state, and 
private or speculators. Vacant government lands may 
be obtained, first, by homestead; second, under the 
timber and stone act, and by land warrants or scrip. 

A party going into an unsurveyed township and 
squatting upon a piece of land acquires a preferred 
right to the land as a homestead, and is permitted 
sixty days' time in which to make an entry for the 
land after the township has been opened for settlement. 
He must be a bona Ude settler upon the land and must 
have begun his improvements. 

State Lands. 

State lands are classified under three heads, agri- 
cultural, timber and mineral, and are under the imme- 
diate care and control of the State Auditor, who is 
also Commissioner of State Lands at the State Capitol. 

State lands belong to the various trust funds, such 
as school, university and the different state institutions. 
There are about two and one-half million acres of the 
various kinds of state lands still for sale. They are locat- 
ed mainly in the northern part of the state, and in qual- 
ity will average up with other lands open for entry un- 
der the United States laws, or for sale in private hands. 

The laws of our state provide for their sale or dis- 
position, and full information as to these laws can be 
secured by addressing the State Auditor at St. Paul. 



69 



Private Lands. 

Under this head may be embraced lands granted in 
aid of railroads, still unsold, now owned by railroad 
companies or disposed of to land companies, and those 
held by individuals for speculative purposes. 



?^ 

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It is difficult to say the amount of such land on the 
market, but there are still large tracts which can be 
purchased at a price that will be attractive to the actual 
homeseeker or the investor. The railroad companies 



70 



with lines into the western and northern parts of the 
state have good lands for sale varying in price from 
six to twenty dollars per acre and on convenient terms. 
Those tracts owned by private parties can no doubt be 
obtained at similar prices. Railroad and private lands 
now on the market are located nearer to transporta- 
tion lines and markets than the vacant public lands. 

The vacant public, state and private lands certainly 
afford the man of moderate means a good opportunity 
for securing a home in Minnesota, and that means a 
home in the very heart of one of the most prosperous 
districts in the United States. The pioneers of Min- 
nesota were brave, enterprising and patriotic men. 
They built a broad, sound and conservative constitution 
for the new state. Wisdom, justice, moderation and 
patriotism have been conspicuous characteristics of the 
life of our people. Our laws afford ample protection 
for every department of human activity, yet free from 
any radicalism. Our schools and state institutions are 
renowned. Our common schools are endowed for all 
time with the largest school fund of any state in the 
Union, worth upwards of $50,000,000. Our population 
can be trebled and still there would be room for more. 

Taxation and Wealth. 

The constitution of Minnesota provides that all 
taxes to be raised in the state shall be as nearly equal 
as possible, and all property on which taxes are to be 
levied shall have a cash valuation and be equalized and 
uniform throughout the state. 

In .addition to the taxation of real and personal 
property, under provisions named above, we have cer- 
tain substituted or specific forms of taxation for tax- 
ing property of corporations. These taxes, when paid, 
are in lieu of all other taxes. Railroad companies now 
pay three per cent of the gross receipts or earnings 
of the mileage within IMinnesota. The legislature of 
1903 passed an act providing for an increase of the tax 
to four per cent; this must be ratified by the people 
before it becomes operative. It wmU be voted upon at 
the general election in 1904. The tax applies to earn- 
ings from business originating outside and destined 
here, and beginning here and shipped to points outside 
the state, also on trafific passing through the state. 

For the year ending 1903, the railroad taxes will 
amount to about two and one-quarter million dollars, 
at three per cent. Telephone companies pay a tax of 
three per cent upon gross receipts; about $50,000 is 
annually received from that source. Express compa- 
nies pay five per cent on gross receipts, producing 
about $20,000. Fire and life insurance companies pay 
two per cent on gross receipts, producing about $250,- 
000 annually. Owners of vessels sailing international 
waters pay a tax at the port from which they hail of 
three cents per net ton of the registered tonnage; about 
$15,000 is paid in that way. Telegraph and freight line 
companies are assessed by the state board of equaliza- 
tion and taxed at the average rate of taxation in the 
state; about $30,000 is received from that source. All 

71 



specific taxes are paid directly into the state treasury, 
and go to the support of the state government. 

The revenue for the support of counties and mu- 
nicipalities is almost wholly made up of the taxes upon 
real and personal property. The valuations are made 
first by the assessors and equalized by town, county and 
state boards of equalization. The figures show all 
classes of property to be assessed at an average of 
about 40 per cent of its true cash value. 

For the year 1903 there were 39,000,000 acres of land 
assessed, exclusive of town lots; the average assessed 
valuation for each acre is $10.20. The total assessed 
value of real property, including acre, town and city 
lots, with improvements and structures, is $653,000,000. 

For the year 1903 the amount of personal property 
increased from $114,000,000 in 1902 to about $132,000,- 
000, giving the total assessed valuation of all property 
at this time of about $785,000,000. The total amount 
of general taxes levied in the state, including state, 
county, citj', village, township and school district 
taxes for the year 1903, is about $19,000,000. To pro- 
duce that sum on the total assessed value named we ob- 
tain an average tax rate throughout the state of two 
and one-half per cent. The tax levied for support of 
state government is one mill, or about $780,000 of total 
taxes levied. The remainder is for various local pur- 
poses. Of the total taxes levied nearly $7,000,000 goes 
to the support of public schools of the state. Prop- 
erty being assessed at about 40 per cent of its value, 
it will, therefore, be seen that the actual value of tax- 
able property in Minnesota is about $2,000,000,000, and 
these figures are under rather than overestimated. 

The State of Minnesota is well equipped with state 
institution buildings. We have one state prison, one 
reformatory, one training school, three hospitals for 
insane, and two hospitals for chronic insane, a state 
university, five normal schools, one school for blind, 
one for deaf and dumb, one for defectives, one school 
for education and care of orphan children, one home 
for soldiers and sailors of the civil war. The total cost 
of buildings for state institutions is about $10,000,000. 

In addition to the above a new capitol is under con- 
struction at a cost of $4,500,000. The State of Minne- 
sota is nearly free from debt. On Jan. i, 1904, there were 
$959,000 of bonds outstanding, drawing three and one- 
half per cent. Payment of principal and interest is pro- 
c'ided by a tax levy of two-tenths of one mill, which will 
discharge the debt at the rate of about $125,000 a year. 




GOOD CATCH. 



Railroads AND Transportation. 

By A. C. Clausen, Secretary Railroad and Warehouse 
Commission. 

When the pioneer settler first invaded the Territory 
of Minnesota and established towns and villages, the 
only means of transportation from the south and east 
was by river boats on that then great highway, the 
Mississippi river, and by freight wagons across the 
prairies. The river steamboats placed St. Paul, the 
capital city of Minnesota, in closer touch socially and 
in a business way with the city of St. Louis than it 
is to-day with all the modern facilities for travel. 

Within the territory a few steamboats and "bateaux" 
traversed part of the upper Mississippi, the Minnesota 
river, and the Red river, while on land, strings of 
Red River carts, a rude two-wheeled vehicle with a 
carrying capacity of si.K hundred pounds, threaded 
their precarious way along the trails through the terri- 
tory of often hostile Indians, as far northwest as Fort 
Garry at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine 
rivers, where the city of Winnipeg now stands. 

It is needless to state that freight rates in those 
days were high, in fact, almost prohibitive. Exten- 
sive settlement under such conditions was not possible, 
and only hardy and adventurous pioneers dared venture 
into the wilds and establish homes. Yet many did so 
and dwelt for years remote from the conveniences of 
civilization, with minds unvexed by discriminative rail- 
road rates or rebates, and untroubled by thoughts of 
the possible consolidation of competing lines. 

Minnesota was organized as a territory under an 
act of Congress passed on March 3, 1849, and the terri- 
torial legislature, during the craze for railroad con- 
struction schemes which spread over the United 
States and prevailed in a violent form in this state 
during the years 1853 to 1857 (continuing till 1870). 
granted charters to twenty-six railroad companies. 

On February 26, 1857, Congress passed an act au- 
thorizing the creation of the State of INIinnesota, and 
under the state laws, articles of incorporation were 
granted to forty-six railroad companies. 

These seventy-two railroads were,' for the most 
part, "air" lines of a strictly atmospheric character, but 
so intense was the demand for railroad facilities in the 
state, that any enterprise bearing the name railroad was 
eagerly taken up by the people, and its exploitation 
was easy. Large sums of money were invested in these 
enterprises, town sites and-townsite companies sprang 
up all over the state, but especially in the southern 
and central counties; villages, cities, townships and 
even counties gave bonuses aggregating $1,781,500.00 
to aid railroad construction, and so created large debts 
under which they struggled and groaned for many 
years. Congress granted lands amounting ultimately 
to 17,621,952 acres to dififerent lines, including the Nor- 
thern Pacific Railway, and the state, not to be outdone, 
loaned its credit to the extent of five million dollars, 
and granted 3.062,141 acres of swamp land (including 
the grant of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad Com- 
pany), to aid the construction of railroads. 

73 



Some of these land grants, it should be stated, were 
■ever earned, while* in other cases the companies lost 
large quantities of land by reason of delay in construc- 
tion, prior settlement and other causes, so that the to- 
tal amount ot land ultmiately received by the railroads 
has probably not exceeded fifteen million acres. 

Of the five million dollar loan authorized by the 
state legislature, but $2,275,000 was issued in the form 
of bonds, and it was owing in a large measure to popu- 
lar antagonism to the loan that the first period of in- 
flation of railroad enterprises came to a disastrous end. 
Then came the reaction and a period of financial de- 
pression, during which the worthless schemes and pa- 
per railroads were all weeded out and the true era of 
legitimate railroad construction commenced. 

In the spring of 1862, the Hon. A. J. Edgerton, 
Railroad Commissioner of Minnesota, reported that 
there was not a mile of railroad in ^Minnesota, but dur- 
ing that year construction was undertaken in earnest, 
and by December, 1871, there was built and in opera- 
tion, 1,550 miles of railroad in the state. 

The railroad companies at that time recognized 
the fact that the area of wheat land in the United 
States was limited and that Minnesota furnished a 
greater area where wheat could be profitably raised 
than any other state in the Union. Hence the quick 
recuperation from the period of over-speculation, and 
the rapid construction of lines of railroad eager to ac- 
quire control as much as possible of this profitable 
territory. 

From the railroads actually operating in ^^linnesota 
in 1871-72, and the more recent railroads in the Iron 
Ranges, have been built up the great internal and 
transcontinental systems which now extend their lines 
like a network in every one of the eighty-three coun- 
ties of the state. 

The rapiditj' of railroad growth is shown in the- 
following table, which gives the aggregate mileage, 
capital stock, funded debt, gross earnings, etc., of the 
roads for four decades to the close of 1903. 

In December, 1871, there were 1,550 miles of rail- 
road in ^linnesota, and in December, 1903, there were 
7,250 miles in operation. 

These lines of railroad paid into the general revenue 
fund of the state, in taxes for 1902, $1,922,204, and as 
the cost of state government is $3,250,000 it leaves 
but a little over $1,250,000 to be raised annually by 
general taxation on other property. 

The total amount of bonds and stock of the rail- 
road companies operating in Minnesota, as reported 
by them for the year ending June 30th, 1903, was 
$1,995,869,128, of which jMinnesota's proportion, esti- 
mated on a mileage basis, is $294,110,600, or an average 
of $41,611 per mile. The total gross earnings of all 
railroads from operation in this state for the same 
year was $68,061,499, divided as follows: 

From freight $52^926.337 

Passengers 11. 504.521 

Miscellaneous sources.... 3,630,641 

74 



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The question of railroad rates became a burning 
issue in Minnesota as soon as railroad construction 
and operation became sufficiently extensive to enable 

the people to per- 
ceive the effects 
of rate discrimina- 
tion. In 1871 the 
rates charged by 
different roads in 
the state varied 
from 1^4 cents per 
ton per mile to 
Sys cents, while 
the rate charged 
from Chicago to 
the Eastern mar- 
ket was 1.3s cents 
per ton per mile, 
and the general 
cost, as estimated 
by Poor, the rail- 
road statistician, 
was 1% cents. The 
state, therefore, 
asserted its right 
to control railroad 
rates and to su- 
pervise their op- 
eration, and, after 
a long struggle 
and much litiga- 
tion, it carried its 
point, and a State 
Railroad Commis- 
sion was created 
for the purpose. 
The objects and 
powers of this 
commission are 
dealt with at 
length further on, 
but it can be truth- 
fully stated that 
it has accomp- 
lished great things 
for the people dur- 
ing its existence, 
exacting fair treat- 
ment from the 
railroads for all 
classes of ship- 
pers, farmer, mer* 
chant or manufac- 
g turer. Equal rates 

On ^ 

* have been estab- 
lished on all lines 
of railroad, and 
substantial reductions in freight and passenger rates 
have been secured from time to time, as warranted by 



75 



the constantly increasing business of the railroads and 
the needs of the people. It is but fair to add that 
many of the railroad companies have made voluntary 
reductions in their rates, while other have met the de- 
mands of the State Commission cheerfully and prompt- 
ly, recognizing their justice and equity. 



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76 



Since 1885 the commission has reduced the passenger 
rates in this state from 5 to 3 cents per mile. It has 
also reduced the rates on lumber, coal, grain, live stock 
and merchandise. To afford an idea and comparison of 
rates now in force as against those which formerly 
applied, attention is directed to the following table: 



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77 



For the benefit of persons who are not well ac- 
quainted with railroad freight classifications, the fol- 
lowing brief explanatory statement is given: 
Class I. — Includes groceries, dry goods, hats, boots 

and shoes, umbrellas, fresh meat, poultry, 

books, stationery, etc. 
Class 2. — Includes hardware, leather, candy, liquors, salt 

meats in sacks, and several kinds of paper. 
Class 3. — Includes agricultural implements in less than 

carloads, beer in wood, seeds, new furni- 
ture in car loads, etc. 
Class 4. — Includes sugar, cofTce, nails, iron, paint, 

llnnber, coal, and articles of considerable 

weight for their bulk but of low value. 
These first four classes cover shipments in quanti- 
ties less than carloads. Other classes cover carload lots. 
Class 5. — Includes sugar, cofYee, nails, iron, wire, paint, 

packing house products, oils, beer, mineral 

waters, glass, etc. 
Class A. — Includes agricultural implements, machinery 

of most kinds, trees and shrubbery, etc. 
Class B. — Includes emigrants' effects and stock, some 

kinds of paper and strawboard fillers, grain 

and screenings, box material, etc. 
Class C. — Includes hay and straw, cement, junk, green 

vegetables of some kinds, potatoes. lime. etc. 
Class D. — Includes various kinds of ore, coal, pitch, 

ground shells, etc. 
Class E. — Includes sand, stone, fertilizer, brick, sewer 

pipe, wood, etc. 

The principle upon which the state, through its 
Railroad Commission, has insisted and has carried out 
in regard to railroad rates, was clearly stated by Com- 
missioner A. J. Edgerton in his annual report made 
to the legislature in 1871, in the following terms: 

"Establish by law a fair and just tariff from all 
points, and whenever railroads enter upon a struggle 
to break down competition they must do so at their 
own expense and not at the expense of the producers 
who happen to reside at a distance from the points 
of competition." 

So important has been the work of the State Rail- 
road and Warehouse Commission that a short history 
of its creation and acts is necessary for a clear under- 
standing of the railroad situation in Minnesota. It is 
an active, energetic and useful body; its powers are 
broad and have been effectively used for the benefit 
of the people. 

There is no more important field of legislation 
than state control of railroads, and in this respect 
Minnesota is in the vanguard of all the other states; 
its laws secure all the rights of the people and have 
been so carefully considered, judicially drawn and 
wisely administered that the development of the busi- 
ness interests of the state, both agricultural and com- 
mercial, have in no wise been retarded. The Inter- 
state Commerce Act and the Minnesota Railroad and 
Warehouse Commission Act were the pioneers in pub- 
lic control laws. 

78 



The Railroad Commission is charged with the duty 
and the labor of administering these laws, as apply- 
within the state, and with the responsibility of their 
enforcement. It is in session every secular day of the 
year for the purpose of discharging this duty and 
meeting this responsibility. It will be easily under- 
stood that its correspondence is very extensive — some 
unreasonable complaints are made to it — but all such 
are attended to and the complaining party fully an- 
swered. No unreasonable or unlawful demands are 
made of the railway companies. All reasonable com- 
plaints are promptly attended to — and for the most 
part satisfactorily adjusted. 

Railroad companies operating railroads in this state 
are required by law to pay taxes on the basis of their 
gross earnings, which consist of business beginning 
and ending within the state, and a proportion based 
upon the proportion of the mileage within the state 
to the entire mileage over which such business is 
done, of earnings on all interstate business passing 
through, into or out of the state. For the first three 
years of operation the tax is i per cent; for the next 
seven years, 2 per cent, and after ten years, 3 per cent. 

Railroad companies' are required to make verified 
reports of gross earnings for the calendar year to this 
commission on or before February ist each year, and 
it is the duty of the commission to certify said returns 
to the State Auditor, showing the per centum and the 
amount of tax due thereon. 

The State Auditor then makes his draft on the 
railroad corporation for the amount of tax due and 
places the same in the hands of the State Treasurer 
for collection. Taxes paid in 1903 by the railroad 
companies approximated two million dollars. 

The Railroad and Warehouse Commission is not 
only called upon to administer the railroad laws of 
the state, but there is imposed upon them the duty of 
exercising a supervision over the grain interests of 
the state by virtue of the provisions of the warehouse 
and grain laws enacted in 1885 and since that time, 
the primary object being to afford protection to pro- 
ducers of grain in the matter of grades and weights 
when marketing their products at the terminal markets 
of the state. 

In this capacity the commission has. organized a 
system of grain inspection and weighing, involving the 
employment of over 200 inspectors, weighers and other 
necessary employes, who grade and weigh the grain 
under rule fixed by the commission for that purpose. 
The Minnesota inspection is known in all the grain 
markets of the world and enjoys distinction and full 
credit as being eminently just, fair and impartial. 

For the crop year ending August 31st, 1903, there 
were inspected and weighed on arrival at Minneapolis 
and Duluth, the two large terminal points for grain 
handling-, 213,216 carloads of grain and flaxseed. There 
were inspected and weighed out of store at the same 
points the equivalent of 117,000 carloads of grain and 
flaxseed. 

79 



Under this u>stem the work is supported by the 
collection of fees, thus entailing no expense to the 
state. The fees charged are 25 cents per carload for 
inspection, and a similar charge for weighing, being 
lower than is exacted for a like service in any other 
grain market in the country. 

The Railroad and Warehouse Commission is also 
required to supervise the business of grain commission 
merchants, who are compelled to procure licenses from 
the commission before undertaking to transact busi- 
ness and to provide a bond with good and sufficient 
securities for the protection of persons making con- 
signments. The commission has full authority to in- 
vestigate the business of such commission merchants, 
with power to send for books and papers whenever 
complaint has been filed. This law provides an ade- 
quate penalty for infraction of any of its provisions. 

The large quantities of land granted by congress 
and the state to aid railroad construction have, in the 



^m^' 




MINNESOTA THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE. 
Chicken Shooting in the Stubble. 

main, been wisely used by the grantees, who have 
placed their lands on the market at reasonable prices, 
and by every legitimate means encouraged emigrants 
to settle upon them. From Scandinavia, Germany, 
Great Britain, Iceland, Finland, Russia, Holland, Po- 
land and northern Europe generally, the railroad com- 
panies have brought hundreds of thousands of set- 
tlers and homeseekers of a most desirable class, who 
have made their homes in Minnesota and helped to 
build up the state. In doing so, there is no doubt the 
railroad companies made many sacrifices, but it has 
proved a good investment for them, as the enormous 
growth of railroad business indicated by the figures 
before given indicates. 

In equipment, convenience and economy of opera- 
tion, the railroad companies in Minnesota have kept 
well ahead of the times. For luxury and comfort no 
trains in the United States can compare with those 
running out of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Pacific 
coast trains and the trains plying betwee 1 St. Paul 

80 



and Chicago, and St. Paul and Duluth, are palaces on 
wheels, fitted with eveny modern utility. For freight 
traffic, the rolling stock on Minnesota railroads is su- 
perior to any in the country. The old-fashioned wood- 
en box car, capable of carrying 20,000 pounds of mer- 
chandise, or 600 bushels of wheat, has given way to 
cars with three and four times their carrying capacity, 
and recently there have been brought into use cars 
constructed of steel, capable of carrying 100,000 
pounds of merchandise, or 1,500 bushels of wheat. To 
haul a train of these immense cars the railroad com- 
panies employ enormously powerful locomotives of 
the most modern type, so that the number of cars in a 
train is almost as great as when smaller cars were used. 
A list of the railroads in operation in Minnesota, 
with their mileage in the state, is appended. 

Miles of Main Track and Branches of Rail- 
roads in All States and in Minnesota, Exclu- 
sive of Trackage Rights, June 30, 1903. 

YEAR. MILES. 

1862 10.00 

1872 1,900.00 

1882.... 3.332.93 

1892 5.615-77 

1903 7.250-01 



NAME OF RAILROAD 



Canadian Northern Ry 

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Ry 

Chicago Great Western Ry 

Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry 

Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha 

Ry 

Chicago & North- Western Ry 

Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Ry 

Dubuque & Sioux City Ry. (111. Central) . . 

Duluth, Missabe & Northern Ry 

Duluth &Iron Range R. R 

Duluth & Northern Minnesota Ry 

Great Northern Ry 

Iowa Central Ry 

Minneapolis & St. I,ouis R. R 

Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie 

Ry 

Minneapolis & North Wisconsin Ry 

Minnesota & International Ry 

Northern Pacific Ry 

Red I<ake Transportation Co 

Willmar & Sioux Falls Ry 

Wisconsin Central Ry 

Wisconsin, Minnesota & Pacific Ry 

Total 



TOTAL 


MILES TN 


MILEAGE 


MINNE- 




SOTA 


t 


43-70 


8,095.69 


23.61 


846.18 


145-62 


6,832.92 


1,147.05 


1,523.89 


434.97 


7.327.38 


650.30 


5> 184-05 


235-87 


757-52 


29.99 


161.33 


161.33 


209-54 


205.54 


70.00 


70.00 


4,814.90 


1.832 25 


502.27 


* 


631.73 


37S.6I 


1,453.28 


230.34 


66.40 


66.40 


146.67 


146.67 


5.567.06 


1,022.98 


14-05 


14.05 


433-41 


133.91 


982.51 


25-32 


309-25 


247.50 



7,250.01 



Not shown. 

No mileage in Minnesota. 



I^iue operated by M. & St. I,. R. R. 




GBNEVA BEACH, Ai^BXANDRIA, MINN. 

8z 



MANUFACTURING. 

By C. J. Whellams, Secretary Northwestern Manufacturers' 
Association. 

The establishment of manufactories on the shores 
of the western world was contemporaneous with its 
earliest settlement. The artisan came with the trader, 
the agriculturist, the schoolmaster, and the preacher. 
Up to the time of the Revolution a large proportion of 
the colonial manufactures was the product of house- 
hold industries. These industries gave employment to 
both male and female members of the families. Over 
a century ago, it is computed in a number of districts, 
"that two-thirds, three-fourths, and four-fifths of all the 
clothing of the inhabitants was made by themselves." 

A few years since, the State of Minnesota was only 
a frontier state. But with the commencement of rail- 
road construction the rapid growth of the Twin Cities 
commenced, and the birth of several towns throughout 
the state took place. After the Civil War and early in 
the seventies financial stringency was severely felt all 
over the country, which was disastrous to many enter- 
prises. It forced into bankruptcy the St. Paul & Pa- 
cific Railroad, also prevented the building and exten- 
sion of others. 

This depression continued for several years, which 
retarded the development of the Twin Cities and towns 
on the lines of railroad. With the passing of the hard 
times emigrants poured into ISIinnesota, attracted by 
its soil and climate. The St. Paul & Pacific Railroad 
passed into other hands, who took hold of it with vigor, 
and the extension of various lines of railroad by other 
companies was pushed. It increased the settlement 
on farm lands (aided by the fertility of the soil), which 
produced good crops and created a demand for our 
manufactures to such an extent that new manufactur- 
ing industries were established and the grpwth of 
manufacturing throughout the state began to increase, 
so that to-day the State of Minnesota ranks seventh 
in prominence as a manufacturing state. 

The last census returns show that the capital em- 
ployed in 1900 was $165,832,246, distributed between 
13,000 plants, large and small. 

The manufacturers employed 77.234 wage earners, to 
whom they pay yearly the sum of $35,484,425 in wages. 

The manufacturers pay over ten per cent of the 
whole assessed valuation of the state. 

The manufactured products at the last census 
amounted to $262,655,881. 

Its output is distributed wherever the American 
flag floats, and finds a market throughout the world, 
particularly its food products. 

Its chief industries are the manufacture of agri- 
cultural machinery, boots, brick, biscuits, butter, 
cheese, carriages, crackers, cigars, doors, electrical 
machinery, electrical supplies, flax fibre, flour, fur gar- 
ments, furniture, grass matting and mats, interior fin- 
ish, iron from ore, lumber, linseed oil, men's imder- 
clothing, organs, overalls, packed hams, packed meats, 
packed bacons, pressed metal, sleighs, shoes, stone, 

82 



sash, shirt waists, structural iron, tinware, twine, wo- 
men's underclothing, wagons. 

The greatest number of manufacturing industries 
are to be found in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, Red 
Wing, Faribault, Winona, Mankato, Stillwater, Sauk 
Centre, Owatonna, Rochester, New Ulm. 

With the extension of the rapid settlement of the 
northwest, and the extension of the railroad to the 
Pacific ocean, and the area that has and will become 
productive through irrigation, and the country tributary 
to Minnesota, opened up a home market and created 
a demand for the various manufactured products of the 
state, it increased the demand for goods to such an 
extent that the capacity of the present manufacturing 
plants is not adequate to meet the demand. Capital 
can secure seven to eight per cent interest on preferred 
stock in many of our old established factories. To the 
north lies the great Canadian Northwest, which is fill- 




A FAVORITE HOI,K, FISKIHG FROM CANOE. 

ing up so rapidly with settlers that under reciprocal 
treaty a trade might be obtained for the State of Min- 
nesota, that would become equal to the home trade 
already obtained. Our enterprising citizen, Mr. J. J. 
Hill, is providing traffic communication by land and 
sea, that with the completion of the Panama canal 
should enable this country to secure some of that large 
volume of business in the Orient now being done witli 
European countries. 

Situated as the State of ^Minnesota is to the Pacific 
Ocean, it is only fair to assume that its enterprising 
manufacturers will seek to do business there, also with. 
the Australian Colonies and South America. It must 
be apparent that the State of Minnesota presents un- 
usual facilities for the growth and development of man- 
ufacturmg industries, and at the present ''ate of prog- 
ress it will not be many years until, instead of ranking 
seventh as a manufacturing state, it will take a middle 
place. Its large ore deposits will attract the iron- 
master, and instead of the ore being taken to the 
smelter, smelters will be built near the ore, and the 

«3 



coal will be brought to them to keep them running. 
Its furnaces may rank in a few years the largest in the 
country, if not in the world. 

The manufacture of grass mats and matting from 
grass that for years had gone to waste is a new im- 
portant industry and is a source of considerable income 
to the farmer. As manufacturing advanced more labor 
was employed in the factory, and created a large de- 
mand for the products of the farm, securing to the 
farmers of Minnesota a reliable and profitable market. 
Thus the price of farm lands has increased, so that the 
purchase of farm lands and the settlement on home- 
steads during this period has been very considerable. 

Its healthy climate and exceptional opportunities 
make the State of Minnesota a very desirable place to 
live in, profitable to the farmer who secures lands, as 
also to the manufacturer who starts a manufacturing 
industry. Agriculture and manufacture are the back- 
bone of the state; by their united efforts it is being 
built up, increasing the value of all property in city, 
town, and country. 

MINING. 

By Dwight 'H. Woodbridge, 

Minnesota is the chief iron mining state in the 
Union, mines more ore than any nation on the globe 
excepting Germany, and may pass her also in a few 
years. Minnesota is the mainstay of the steel industry 
of the United States, and how important this is to the 
country none need be told. It is from Minnesota ore 
that are constructed the vast upspringing arches sus- 
taining the roofs of the great city buildings; Minne- 
sota ore made the steel that has linked Russia with 
the far East, that built the viaducts spanning chasms 
in India and Asia, the battleships that carry the name 
of this country over distant and storied seas; in short, 
it has made possible those splendid triumphs of peace 
and war accomplished by the United States in the last 
great upward movement of our nation. 

And Minnesota as a mining factor was not known 
two decades back; its share was unimportant within lo 
years. In 1900 it produced 49.6 % of all iron ore mined 
in this Lake Superior region; in the next year its pro- 
portion was 52.4; in 1902 it was 55.3, and in 1903 this 
new state furnished 59.7 % of all iron mined in this over- 
whelmingly important Northwestern mining district. 

This portion of the United States called the "Lake 
Superior region" is pre-eminent as a source of supply 
for iron ores of purity; not only this, but it is the only 
American district that furnishes ores in considerable 
quantity of the character required in the manufacture 
of bessemer steel. While a notable improvement has 
taken place lately in the favorable recognition of 
open-hearth steels, they are still a minor factor in the 
tonnage of steel products, and will probably continue 
subordinate so long as ores for the bessemer process 

84 



are plentiful and cheap. More than 75 per cent of all 
iron ores used in America are mined along the shores 
of Lake Superior, and far more than 75 per cent of the 
iron and steel made in this country is from these ores. 
They are uniformly purer than those mined elsewhere, 
so a ton of standard lake ore will make nearer a ton 
of pig iron than the same quantity of standard grade 
ore from any other district of the United States. The 
iron ores of the "eastern district," New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, vary from 35 to 53 
per cent in iron, so that it takes about two to three 
tons of ore to make one ton of pig iron. The ores of 
the South, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia, are still 
leaner and more earthy. In the Lake Superior region, 
up to a year or two ago, nothing was considered mer- 
chantable ore that did not assay better than 60 per 
cent, and the average of shipments was higher than 
that. Indeed, ores of a character that would be con- 
sidered excellent in the South and East were used for 
ballast for roadways. Now, however, there has been 
a slight change, and ores running so low as 55 per 
cent are shipped. But these are in the minority, and 
the average of the region is still about 60 per cent. 
The highest grades of Lake Superior ores to be 
shipped in quantity are those .from Minnesota mines, 
on both the Vermillion and Mesaba ranges. 

It has been due to the wonderful deposits of the 
Mesaba range that Minnesota has sprung so quickly 
to the front. It is the most remarkable iron ore re- 
gion, both geologically and commercially, that has 
come to the knowledge of man. It has been almost 
solely responsible for the great development of the 
steel industry in the past few years; to it has been 
due, more than to any other single underlying cause, 
the necessity for the formation of the world's largest 
and most important aggregation of capital in manu- 
facturing industry; and it has made the harbor of Du- 
luth-Superior one of the chief points for origination of 
water-borne commerce. 

In the year 1903 the commerce of the Duluth-Su- 
perior harbor, whose weight consists very largely of 
iron ore and associated products, was reported by the 
United States government to amount to 23,000,000 
tons; during the same time the commerce of New York 
and its sub-ports amounted to 30,000,000 tons, that 
of Philadelphia to 21,000,000, and of Boston to about 
20,000,000. None of these figures include commerce 
entirely within any one of the districts. It is re- 
liably stated in most recent statistics that the com- 
merce of the head of Lake Superior, passing under 
the distinctive name of "the port of Duluth," was 
fifth among the great maritime cities of the globe. It 
has been iron ore that has given it this distinction. 
For ore, while it is not of high monetary value per 
ton, exceeds in weight any other article moved upon 
the great lakes, and the point from which the most ore 
is transported leads in importance of its tonnage. 

It is a remarkable distinction thus given the in- 
terior ports on -Lake Superior, ports open for com- 

85 



merce but eight months of the j'Car, ana generally 
considered as points of somewhat minor importance. 
That it is remarkable no one can fail to appreciate 
■who realizes the youth of the Northwest, and the in- 
tense commercial activity, the veritable armies of men 
and the modern and costly terminal facilities, ar- 
ranged with the utmost refinement of labor-saving de- 
vices, that are required for handling such a traffic, 
compressed into the brief two-thirds of a year. It 
was only 50 years ago that the first ships passed 
through the St. IMary's canal and rutifled the depths 
of the upper lake, and men are still in the prime of 
life who had charge of the earliest vessels that brought 
settlers to hew out an abiding place and homes at the 
western end of Superior. 

One cannot realize the importance of the iron ore 
business of the Lake Superior region, and of ^linne- 
sota, nor the advances that have been made recently, 
until he gives the subject study and compares the 
present state of the industry with that of previous 
years and with that of other iron-producing districts 
in this country and Europe. During the past 50 years 
the United States has risen from a position of abso- 
lute dependence upon the old world for its iron sup- 
plies to that of the largest producer in the world and 
an enormous exporter. The first shipment of iron 
ore from Lake Superior was made in 1850. and con- 
sisted of 10 tons. This was hauled around the rapids 
of Sault Ste. Marie, at the lower end of Lake Superior, 
on a little strap railway. Unloaded from toy vessels 
above the rapids, it was reloaded below them into 
others almost as tiny. The first use of Lake Superior 
ore in a blast furnace took place in 1853 in Pennsyl- 
vania, when about 70 tons, brought at great expense 
from Lake Erie by canal, were used in the Sharpsville 
furnace. The first pig iron made in the Lake Superior 
region was in 1858, in a small furnace near Mar- 
quette. It was not imtil 1890 that the United States 
passed Great Britain in the manufacture of pig iron, 
and since 1896 it has maintained this position, pro- 
ducing in 1903 18,009,000 gross tons, while Germany 
made 10,085,000 tons and Great Britain still less. It 
was in 1867 that the Bessemer process was developed 
so that steel rails were available for commercial uses 
at prices that were at all possible. In 1869 the pro- 
duction of rails was 8,616 tons and the cost was $132 a 
ton. In 1901, 32 years later, the production of rails 
had mounted to 2,870,810 tons and the price had 
dropped to $27.33 a ton. 

Since the commencement of iron mining on Lake 
Superior we have shipped 244,000,000 gross tons, of 
which half has been produced and consumed industri- 
ally in the last seven years. Three-fourths of the quan- 
tity, so incomprehensibly vast, is the work of 13 brief 
seasons. It took all the years from 1850 to 1886 to find a 
market for as much ore as was required in 1903 alone. 

The existence of iron ore in Minnesota has been 
known for the past 50 years, but no serious and sus- 
tained attempt at its examination was made until the 

86 



'7o's, and the first actual mining took place in 1884. 
Then the Duluth & Iron Range road was completed 
from Lake Superior to mines on the shore of Vermil- 
lion lake, about 70 miles inland. The Minnesota Iron 
Company was formed and in that year shipped a small 
amount of splendid 'high grade hard ore, the first to 
go out of the state, and the initial trickle of what is 
now a splendid flood of traffic. The road has in- 
creased its business constantly, until it is now of enor- 
mous proportions. The production from mines to 
which this railway was originally built was in 1903 just 
3 per cent of the ore business of the road. This fact 
is an interesting commentary on the crudity of ideas 
of the iron trade of Minnesota and the Northwest en- 
tertained 20 years ago by those who were its leaders 
and its most courageous pioneers. And when that 
road was constructed and the daring adventure was 
successfully made, there was no thought that other and 
far larger deposits lay contiguous, or that any other 
business might be secured. The Duluth & Iron 
Range was the first, and for many years the only, iron 
ore road in the state. 

In 1890 the Mesaba deposits were found by men 
who knew the value of iron, and what it might mean 
to the state and nation. Innumerable were the hard- 
ships of early explorers, as they are in every new dis- 
trict; but development was exceedingly rapid, and in 
the fall of 1892 there was a railway to the Alesaba. It 
hauled out one trainload of ore before winter set in 
that year, and that was sent, as a trial shipment, to 
an Eastern furnace. Since then there has been a con- 
stant and steady growth, until last year the Mesaba 
range shipped 52.8 per cent of all ore forwarded from 
the Lake Superior region. When the Mesaba was 
first opened it was generally supposed, and particularly 
by those interested in other fields, who feared its 
cheap mining and vast stores of ore would make value- 
less all other districts, that but a very small percentage 
of its peculiar ores could be used in the blast furnace 
charge. This was on account of the fact that these 
ores, instead of being hard and granular, like those of 
most of the other regions, were fine and in some cases 
dustlike. They packed in the furnaces and occasionally 
caused dangerous and even fatal explosions. But un- 
der the stimulus of low costs for these ores the difficul- 
ties have been overcome, and their use has rapidly ex- 
tended, until to-day more than half the steel made in 
the great centers of Pennsylvania. New York and Ohio 
is from ores mined upon the Mesaba range. It was 
only after strenuous campaigns of education, of costly 
experiment, through serious financial difficulty and at 
the risk of worse, that the steel makers of the iron 
centers of America were mduced to favor the new dis- 
trict, and the struggles of those early days are little 
appreciated by any not intimately associated with 
them. These demanded the broad view of men of af- 
fairs, the faith in future growth and development of 
the iron trade that was lacking in many quarters dur- 
ing the trying days of 1894 and 1895, an abundance of 

88 



ready funds, a belief that apparently insuperable obsta- 
cles could be overcome and that new and untried meth- 
ods must win, and, finally, a faith in the ultimate full 
acceptance of value in ores of the new and then unsat- 
isfactory character of the Mesaba deposits. 

These Mesaba mines are the most wonderful that 
have been opened anywhere on the globe. Instead of 
lying nearly vertical and running to great depths, they 
lie in beds at an average dip of not more than eight 
degrees. Instead of being inclosed in rock of the 
hardest kinds, they are covered by glacial drift, gravel, 
boulders, clay and swamps, and there are compara- 
tively few feet of these materials over any of the 
mines. And all these points of difiference mean but 
one thing — less cost of winning the ore. Less cost 
means cheaper steel, and cheaper steel means the fur- 
ther extension of its uses and of the domination of the 
United States over the industrial activity of the world. 
Iron ore shipments from Lake Superior for the 
past two years have been as follows, the figures being 
in long tons of 2,240 pounds, which is the ton exclu- 
sively used by mining companies and buyers: 

Range 1902 1903 Decrease 

Mesaba 13,342,840 12,892.542 449,298 3.4 

Menominee 4.627,524 3,741,284 886,240 19.1 

Marquette 3,853,010 3,040,245 812,765 21.1 

Gogebic 3,663,484 2,912,912 750.572 20.7 

Vermillion 2,084,263 1,676,699 407,519 19.5 

Michipicoten 298,421 201,057 97.3^4 32.5 

Totals 27,869,524 24,482,642 3,386,882 12.2 

That there was a decrease in the total shipments of 
the year is a fact the reasons for which are not far to 
seek; the public knows of the brief but tremendous 
shrinkage in the volume of steel trade during the clos- 
ing months of 1903. But while other lake ranges re- 
duced their output about 20 per cent, the diminution 
of the Mesaba was less than 4 per cent. And it is a 
safe prediction that the proportionate shipments from 
this wonderful deposit of rich iron ores will continue 
to increase, in good times or dull, for many years to 
come. 

Total shipments of iron ore from the Lake Superior 
region for all time since mining commenced there 
have been as follows, with the proportionate quantities 

of the several districts: 

When Total Per 

Range Opened Shipments Cent 

Marquette 1850 69,800,898 28.6 

Mesaba 1893 66.576,771 27.2 

Menominee 1877 45,918,499 18.8 

Gogebic 1884 40,646,454 16.6 

Vermillion 1884 20,738,250 8.5 

Michipicoten 1900 794.645 0.3 

Totals 244,475,517 loo.o 

The Marquette range, with its 53 years of growth, 
has mined but 1.4 per cent more than the Mesaba, not 
yet in its teens. No other lake district has ap- 
proached the record of the Minnesota range. The 
present year will put the latter far ahead of any of its 
adjacent districts, and the passage of years will but 
increase its lead. 

89 



Though there has been a considerable decline in ore 
mining since 1902, the average of growth for ten-year 
periods has been in the neighborhood of 300 per cent. 
For decennial periods since the industry became of 
importance the figures are as follows: 

Year Tons Mined 

1864 247.000 

1874 900,000 

1884 2.500.000 

1894 7,750.000 

1903 ^4 5CO.00O 

The great increase cf tonnage in 1902, when ship- 
ments reached 27,500,000 tons, was out of line with the 
average growth, and the following year brought things 
to their even keel again. If the steadiness of this con- 
stant and wonderful increase means anything it indi- 
cates that the ratio in future will be fairly conform- 
able to rule and that, while no such rise as 300 per 
cent every decennial period is probable, or possible, it 
will be large. Had it not been for the discovery of 
the Alesaba range no such expansion as has taken 
place in the past few years would have been possible. 
Indeed, were it possible to conceive this range now 
eliminated, no more material calamity could befall the 
United States, which would at once retire from her 
proud position as chief arbiter of the steel trade of 
the world. Without the ]\Iesaba there could not have 
been produced the necessary amount of high grade ore 
to have met the requirements of America and the 
demands of export trade that has come up so rapidly 
of late. It is a question, indeed, if enough iron could 
have been mined to meet home demand. If this re- 
quirement might have been met without the Mesaba 
it could only have been by the use of far leaner ores 
than have now been necessary. These would have so 
far increased costs that the people of the United States 
could never have reached their record-breaking con- 
sumption of the present. 

The Mesaba is not only the largest producer, but it 
contains the biggest mines to be found. It has sev- 
eral that are limited in their annual capacity only by 
the demands of the steel trade and the ability of rail- 
ways to take away what they mine. IMines on the IMe- 
saba have produced as much as 15.000 tons a day, for 
weeks together, and might maintain this extraordinary 
production for entire seasons could railways, ships and 
receivers care for the avalanche of tonnage. Last 
year there were 15 mines on Lake Superior that pro- 
duced more than 500.000 tons each. Of the 15, 10 were 
in Minnesota and nine upon the IMesaba range. Up 
to 1894 there never had been a mine in the world that 
had produced as much as 500.000 tons in a single year. 
With its ore lying near the surface of the ground 
and somewhat horizontal of dip, IMesaba mining meth- 
ods have been revolutionary. The bulk of its ore is 
taken from mines that have been "stripped" of the 
overburden of sand, gravel, boulders and rock before 
the process of actual mining is commenced. This 
stripping is usually done by powerful steam shovels, 

CD 



and is simply a rolling back of the glacial drift, etc., 
overlying the thick blanket of ore. These stripped 
mines are of two classes. First, those in which the 

machinery used for win- 
ning and removing the 
ore consists simply of a 
great steam shovel and 
a train of standard gauge 
cars upon a main line 
track; and, second, those 
in which the ore is first 
dropped or "milled" 
down, then trammed to 
shafts and hoisted as in 
the ordinary manner of 
mines. Either is of tre- 
mendous advantage over 
underground methods, 
of whatever character. 
By either mining costs 
are reduced to such ex- 
tent that owners of 
. these mines are inde- 
^ pendent of competition. 
S In the second class of 
O* stripped mines, those 
« whose process is called 
S "milling," there is a 
combination of the un- 
§ derground and steam 
§ shovel processes of a 
O most ingenious charac- 
S ter. Modifications of 



W 



both these devices for 
mining, such as have 
suggested themselves 
through the character of 
the ore bodies or the 
inventiveness and orig- 
inality of managers, are 
constantly in play. In 
either the tonnage pro- 
duced is something so 
great, per man per day, 
as would give the writ- 
er, should he quote fig- 
ures, an unenviable rep- 
utation among mining 
men unaccustomed to 
these regions. This prod- 
uct is greatly increased 
by the character of the 
ore itself, which is of so 
soft a nature that much 
of the drilling is done by 
hand augers at a rapid 
rate, and which permits 
the direct mining by steam shovel with no more 
explosives than are required to sim-pIy loosen the 



oi 



ground by heavy charges of black powder; indeed, in 
many mines even this is neglected and the shovel 
vi'orks against a bank of ore that has never been dis- 
turbed since it was originally formed there in place. 

Seventy-five thousand people in northern Minne- 
sota, chiefly in St. Louis county, are directly sup- 
ported by the mining of iron ore. Aside from these, 
a very large part of the population of the thriving and 
growing city of Duluth depend either directly or in- 
directly upon the same industry. The benefit of this 
industry extends throughout the farming communities 
of Minnesota and adjacent states in wide and benefi- 
cent streams, making a home market for a vast vol- 
ume of produce and supplies which cannot be grown 
among the mines. It will not be out of the way to esti- 
mate that nearly 250,000 persons in Minnesota derive 
at least a considerable portion of their support from 
the operation of these great mines. Even from this 
materialistic standpoint the continued and successful 
operation of these mines is a national blessing. Dur- 
ing the year 1903 their payrolls contained the names 
of about 18,000 full-time men, and the rate of wage 
was higher than that of any similarly skilled classes of 
labor throughout the state. At the same time more 
than 4,800 men were employed on the ore-carrying 
railways of St. Louis county. Not far from 5,000 
more gain their livelihood on ships employed almost 
exclusively in the ore trade. This is an army of wage 
earners of the highest type that means something 
definite and inspiring and stands for the development 
of a great region. 

Hibbing, Eveleth, Ely, Tower, Virginia, Soudan, 
Sparta and half a dozen other towns of from a few 
hundred to 10,000 inhabitants, all bear the stamp of 
energy, ability, faith and funds. All have schools that 
would do credit to any city in the Union, and this is 
said without fear of contradiction. Statistics show 
that the pay of teachers in the range towns and vil- 
lages averages higher than in any other country dis- 
tricts in this broad land of universal education. These 
towns have hospitals as modernly equipped as those of 
the finest clinic of the universities, and in 
them all are to be found the same refined 
comforts of civilized life that are 
usually associated only with cen- 
ters of larger population. The 
mining companies have striv- 
en to make life pleasant; their 
locations are models of com- 
fortable, cleanly and attractive 
homes. It is probable that in 
no distinctively mining region 
are the amenities of life so 
generally observed as in these 
mine cities and locations in 
Minnesota and other regions 
about Lake Superior. Therr 

are none, most assuredly, ^"^ '^'"^ MINES. 

where miners are so contented, so prosperous and so 

92 







forehanded, where strikes and labor troubles are so 
rare and where the relations of employer and em- 
ployed are so agreeable. 

Minnesota iron ores reach the East by a system of 
transportation that is not surpassed for economy of 
operation and excellence of results. From the time the 
shovel of the open pit mine or the skip of the deep un- 
derground property drops its load of ore into a car, hu- 
man hand does not touch it until lower lake ports are 
reached. With improvements now going on at re- 
ceiving points, unloading there is to be largely auto- 
matic, and from the time ore leaves the mine till it 
comes from the steel finishing mills its passage is prac- 
tically mechanical throughout. The cars carrying ore 
from mines to Lake Superior ports run onto elevated 
docks and are of hopper bottom construction, so that 
the ore is dropped from them into great triangular 
pockets. Here it lies until a ship comes alongside, 
when a shute is lowered '"".to position, a gate in the 
lower point of the pocket is opened and the ore slides 
on by gravity into the hold of the great vessel. Her 
cargo loaded, the ship leaves port and in a few days 
arrives at some Lake Erie receiving port, where she 
is placed under a tremendous unloading machine of 
one of some half-dozen types. Some of these have 
now been perfected to such an extent that the entire 
cargo is taken out without human aid, and the arduous 
human labor of the swarthy ore shoveler is eliminated 
from the economy of the trade. Five and six thousand 
tons of ore are taken from a ship by two machines in 
tour or five hours at a cost of less than five cents per 
ton. The entire charge against ore from the time it 
leaves the most inaccessible mines on the most dis- 
tant Lake Superior range till it is in cars or on stock- 
pile at some Lake Erie port is less than $i.8o a gross 
ton, and this includes two handlings, more than lOO 
miles of rail haul and 1,000 miles of water transporta- 
tion. These figures of low costs are equaled nowhere 
else. Water transportation has been so perfected that 
vessels of the great lakes make large profits at a rate 
of freight amounting to less than one mill per ton 
mile, which is lower than any similar rate made regu- 
larly in any part of the globe. 

There are three great railway systems engaged al- 
most exclusively in handling iron ore from Minnesota 
mines to Lake Superior terminals, these latter being 
on the harbor front of Duluth-Superior and at Two 
Harbors, sub-port of Duluth, a few miles down the 
north shore of Lake Superior. These three roads 
moved during the season of 1903 14,500,000 tons of ore, 
n round figures. Their shipping season begins in 
A.pril and ends in December, with the close of navi- 
gation on Lake Superior. It is a brief year, and the 
k'olume of traffic that is compressed into a few months 
s of enormous amount. These three railways are the 
Duluth, Missabe & Northern, the Duluth & Iron 
Range and an important branch of the Great Northern 
Railway. It is probable that for many years the Du- 
uth, Missabe & Northern will lead in the gross volume 

93 



of business, as it tap? a district that contains a 
great quantity of easily mined ore of the character J 
most in demand, and as it supplies customers whose ' 
requirements are large and fairlj'^ constant. i 

These roads are all provided with the most elab- " 
orate and complete equipments of rolling stock, mo- 
tive power and terminals, the latter largely of special 
design, adapted solely for their peculiar business. , 
Their ore cars are mainly of steel, carrying from loo.- 
ooo to 112,000 pounds each; their locomotives are the | 
most powerful in use in America. Their terminals in- 
clude vast ore docks erected for their special purpose 
at great cost and under the supervision of the highest 
engineering skill. The demands upon an ore dock are 
particular and intricate. It must be so high above 
water that the largest lake ships can lie under its side 
and receive ore from the bottom of its pockets by 
gravity; in other words, the bottom of its pockets 
must be elevated about 40 feet from water level, and 
the entire weight of load must be carried above that 
height. The docks must have capacity for 50,000 to 
90,000 tons of ore in these pockets, must be strong 
enough to permit the free movement of great engines 
and trains of loaded cars upon the upper floors, per- 
haps 75 feet above water and 95 or more from the 
ground. The largest, highest and most capacious 
docks in the world are those at the head of Lake 
Superior. Those of the Duluth, !Missabe & Northern 
have two and one-half miles of loading frontage in 
three piers. Two of the three are a half mile long, and 
are equipped with pockets and loading devices upon 
either side. One pier belonging to the Great Northern 
system is the highest and widest dock ever built for 
this traffic, with capacity in its ample pockets for the 
storage of 90,000 tons of ore at one time. 

The annual cost of administering the affairs of the 
great commonwealth of ^linnesota, with all its de- 
partments and bureaus, its institutions for higher 
education, its various penal establishments and its 
broad and liberal charities, is in the neighborhood of 
$2,500,000 a year. Of this these three iron ore roads, 
handling one kind of freight almost exclusively, and 
confined to one corner of the state, to one county, in- 
deed, pay fully $42^.000. They pay nearly one-third of 
all taxes of all its railroads, including the many great 
lines centering in Minneapolis and St. Paul. These 
are astonishing comparisons, but they are the simple 
facts. And these railway taxes are but a minor portion 
of the money flowing into the public treasury from this 
single industry of mining in St. Louis county. The 
mines themselves pay taxes amounting to about $600,- 
000 per annum. Thus more than $1,000,000 a year is 
directly derived from this single productive enterprise 
for the support of the commonwealth, the county, the 
city, the village. How much more is paid by those 
more or less directly supported by the industry it 
would be difficult to estimate. 

One of these iron ore roads has the reputation of a 
greater density of traffic ihan any other road in Amer- 

04 



ica, probably than anj- in the world. Its trains thunder 
down the grades from mines to Lake Superior, fol- 
lowing each other at the rate, in the height of the 
season, of 27 to 30 every 24 hours. Their revenue pro- 
ducing train loads are as high as from 2,000 to 2,200 
tons. They are built with 80 and loo-pound steel rails, 
and their standard of maintenance is as high as any 
in America. And not only in a material way, but in an 
ethical way, they are models. It is claimed that in no 
other terminal railway town of like size as Two Har- 
bors are there so many men with bank accounts and 
owning their own homes. That the same is not true of 
the terminal of the Duluth, Missabe & Northern road 
is due simply to the fact that this road is younger than 
the other. Both roads have cared for their employes 
as far as is consistent with good business policy in 
the contributions to public schools and otherwise, and 
both have erected and endowed large and complete 
halls, reading rooms and Y. M. C. A. buildings. 

The connected ownership of mines, railways and 
steamships is of the utmost importance in the econom- 
ical conduct of the entire business. Only one large 
mining company in this state, the United States Steel 
Corporation, has all three, though several large con- 
cerns have both mines and ships. The great lakes ore 
trade is chief among the various branches of commerce 
carried on along the northern lakes. Out of 37,675,000 
net tons of freight carried through Lake Superior in 
1903, 21,654,000 net tons were iron ore, and the ore 
proportion of the previous year was even larger. More 
than 300 modern steel ships of the largest size and 
most powerful equipment are engaged in this traffic. 
Their average size of newer ships in this trade gives 
them each a capacity for about 5,000 gross tons, and 
there were 5,000 such cargoes delivered from lake ports 
last year. At the docks of the Duluth, Missabe &' 
Northern road last year the average weight of cargo 
taken was 6,000 gross tons, and at those of the Duluth 
& Iron Range and Great Northern the figure was 
nearly as high. At no other ports on lakes or oceans 
were the tonnages so great 

The value of iron ore depends upon three charac- 
teristics: First, quality; second, accessibility, and 
third, quantity. It has been shown above that there is 
no ore mined in the United States that can compare 
with that of Minnesota; nor in Europe are there many 
districts of as high grade. The Swedish Lapland 
mines of Luossavara produce a magnetic ore of as 
high, or higher grade, but magnetite is not so favora- 
bly regarded as is the hematite universally produced 
on Lake Superior. The Cleveland district is the most 
important in England; its ore averages 33.5 per cent 
iron and .812 per cent phosphorus, making it too im- 
pure for the bessemer process. White Haven furnishes 
an ore averaging about 54 per cent and Ireland one 
averaging nearly 40 per cent. Spanish ores are ex- 
cellent and average perhaps 58 per cent; the ores of 
Belgium contain from 30 to 45 per cent iron, those of 
Germany from 30 to 40 per cent, Elban from 50 to 60 

93 



pci ceiiv, ana Kussian about tne same. Minnesota 
ores that run under 60 per cent are called low, and a 
few pjints poorer and tkey are not available for ship- 
ment. As to accessibility, there are no mines in the 
world whose transportation to points of consumption 
is at so low a price as those of Lake Superior; water 
freights and the ingenuity of American industrial 
leaders have accomplished that. Accessibility includes 
also ease of production, and in this the giant Mesaba 
mines have no equals. In point of quantity the Me- 
saba is, as has been pointed out, far above any known 
district. At the present time some 70 mines have 
been opened in a stretch of 5b miles, and many more 
have been discovered and are waiting only the proper 
time for their development. It is impossible to make 
any estimate of the amount of ore known to exist in 
northern Minnesota, but that it will supply the steel 
trade of America for many years there is no question, 
while there is a large amount of land that has not yet 
been explored. 

But all this ore will be required, and the value of 
reserves in the ground is continually increasing and 
becoming better recognized, to the advantage of the 
commonwealth and all its citizens. At no other period 
of our history as a nation has steel entered so largely 
into our daily life as a prime necessity of existence. 
Never has it formed so large a proportion of the de- 
tails of common uses of construction. There seems 
no limit yet in sight to the multiplying uses to which 
iron and steel can be put. Their consumption per 
capita in the United States has gradually increased, 
until in 1903 it amounted to 450 pounds. No other 
nation approaches this quantity. The consumption of 
the world is but 20 pounds per inliabitant. As our 
own, and as the consumption of the world grows, the 
demands on Minnesota will increase in rapid ratio, 
and the annual production of mines upon the Mesaba 
and Vermillion ranges will doubtless be largely in- 
creased. 




A FINE STRING OF BI.ACK BASS. 



96 



MINNESOTA A SPORTSMAN'S 
PARADISE. 

By Wallace B. Douglas, Associate Justice of Supreme Court. 

A primeval forest in the north, and ten thousand 
beautiful lakes scattered throughout its domain, ap- 
peals strongly to those who know the difference be- 
tween rifie and shotgun, and to whom the click of the 
reel is familiar music. Here changing climatic condi- 
tions in mid-summer and early fall speak silently to 
young and old, as, well as to the over-worked, and tell 
tales of pleasure and rest which are usually the subjects 
of dreams. 

Comfortable hotels in hundreds of picturesque 
nooks, upon lakes teeming with bass and pike, and 
accessible to well equipped lines of railway, bid the 
traveler welcome; while deeper in the wilderness of 
pine or hardwood, by a rushing trout brook, toward 
which the trcil of deer are well defined, may be found 

SPORT ON THE PASS 

AT poi^e; bridge. 







the cabin of a pioneer or hermit hunter or trapper. 
Experience tells us his "latch string is always out." 
In these nooks and by-places, 

"When round the lonely cottage 
Roars loud the tempest's din, 
And the good logs of Algidus 
Roar louder yet within," 

"o'er true tales" are constantly being told, differing 
sharply from that of how "Horatius kept the bridge." 

From this land of sunshine, forest and plain the 
bison and elk have gone, and caribou are practically 
extinct, but moose and bear in limited numbers, and 
white-tail deer in abundance, still cling to their favorite 
grounds upon the fringe of civilization in the north. 
A fair idea of the vastness of this area, where big game 
abounds (which forms but a small part of Minnesota's 
park region), may be gotten by i-;oting that it is greater 
thaji New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Con- 
necticut and Rhode Island combined. 

Originally ^linnesota was in the direct path of a 
large portion of the northern and southern flight of 
aquatic fowl, and thousands of wild geese and ducks 

97 



still annually tarry here en route to or from their 
breeding grounds in Manitoba, Assinaboia and the great 
tundra country of Alaska. Ours is the natural breeding 




HOOKED BUT 
NOT NETTED. 

grounu of many varieties of wild duck. The Canada 
goose also nests with us, and, thanks to the abolition 
of spring shooting and the enforcement and respect 
paid to the laws, they are again nesting here in rapidly 
increasing numbers, notwithstanding the fact that the 
northern flight has of late years been driven westward. 
If the people of the south who love the great "out- 
doors," and that which entices them there, will follow 
the example of Minnesota, Manitoba, Assinaboia and 
Congress — speaking for Alaska — and prohibit the 
shooting of aquatic wild fowl between December ist 
and September 1st folfowing, the west and south will 
profit by the dearly-bought lesson taught the east and 
southeast, where practical extermination has long since 
existed. This is the natural habitat of the short-tail 
grouse, prairie chicken, partridge, woodcock, snipe of 
various species, and changing conditions have brought 
us the eastern quail; while respect for the law promises 
to preserve them for future generations. 




GENEVA BEACH, ALEXANDRIA, MINN. 
98 



In the future, from a sportsman's or tourist's stand- 
point, when game as a whole must diminish, the wealth 
of Minnesota will lie in its lakes and fish. Our ten 




PRAIRIE 
CHICKENS IN 
A STUBBI^E 

FIEIyD. 

thousand lakes exceed in number, as well as in pro- 
portion to area, those of any state in the Union, and 
are scattered generally throughout the state, as well 
upon the prairie as in the timber or park region. The 
water is usually deep, their banks well studded with 
timber, and, as a whole, they are picturesquely adjusted 
to the landscape. They are from one to over lOO 
miles in circumference and abound with the highest 
type of game fish, including Oswego, or small-mouth 
bass, black bass, muskalonge, pike, pickerel and croppy. 
Minnesota is maintaining two large fish hatcheries 
and breeding successfully brook trout, pike and some 
other species of game fish. With this advanced policy 
as to fish propagation, the least sanguine of our Isaak 
Waltons knows that the hereditary instinct of those who 




LUCKY DAYS IN THE WOODS. 
99 



follow them in future generations will be encouraged. 
Tributary to Park Rapids the state is maintaining, 
as a game preserve, a state park containing upwards of 



THE r>^-r 

DEER 

co^•XTR^ 





25,000 acres, which includes the headwaters of the Mis- 
sissippi river. A park commissioner is in charge to 
entertain the visiting public, and a large, artistic log 
cabin, for a like use, is in course of construction in a 
beautiful forest of pine upon the shore of Lake Itasca. 

Special accommodations are provided to lovers of 
forest and stream at innumerable places, among which 
may be mentioned: Osakis, Alexandria, Annandale, 
Walker, Bemidji, Cass Lake, Detroit, Ortonville, Taylors 
Falls, Fairmont, as well as at Lakes ]\Iiltoona, Milaca, 
Womans, Prior, Howard, Minnetonka and White Bear. 

Tributary to Duluth, upon the north shore of Lake 
Superior, which is studded with palisades of rock and 
fir tree, hundreds of picturesque summer camping 
grounds may be found. This shore, with its cool and 
invigorating climate, easy of access to civilization by 
daily boat, tributary to lake and brook trout fishing 
of the highest order, is little known to the people of 
the country, but those who have once visited it have 
thereafter been its most ardent admirers; while the 
trip to and around Isle Royal is one of the most en- 
joyable in northern travel. 




' PRETTY GOOD 
I,UCK 
ON THE MARSH. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



016 085 466 2 




